Day 35-department meeting with PPE

   February 8-We started the day like most school days; rise at 7am, breakfast of cereal and milk, girls head to bus at 7:55, Spencer heads to kindergarten around 8:15 and Shan and I finish the morning routine with at least two cups of espresso at the faculty lounge. Today, I had a meeting with the PPE faculty, which was conducted in English for my benefit. PPE stands for philosophy, political science and economics. It is a relatively new interdisciplinary major started about a decade ago. Whereas most interdisciplinary majors are formed out of existing majors coming together to create synergy, this major was created without supporting majors.  Ten years ago, the university wanted to expand their number of majors from their two offerings; business and law. They considered engineering and education before deciding to create the PPE major. My understanding is that this decision was made because the curriculum at Bifröst already covered the basics of economics and political science in existing courses, whereas foundational courses were not already in place for engineering and education. About 5 years ago they decided to expand the PPE to include the standard emphasis and one in international studies. They had hoped this would increase enrollment. Instead, it just split their PPE enrollment between the two emphases. Therefore, the international studies emphasis was eliminated and the last international studies students will graduate this year. 
   The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the direction the department should pursue over the next few years. In particular, there is concern in the decline in enrollment, which is mainly due to the financial crash in 2008, which caused Bifröst, a private university, to be (relatively) too expensive for Icelanders to attend. The business department has expanded into both traditional courses taught at Bifröst and online courses. Right after the crash, the traditional courses took a huge hit in enrollment and one year only 1 or 2 students showed up for the business major. The PPE program is starting online courses this fall and there is justifiable concern that their enrollment in traditional courses will decline also. On a side note, I mentioned that Economics was the small department within the Business, Accounting and Economics building and everyone was very surprised.
   Another vein in the discussion was whether to allow students to avoid the mathematically rigorous courses. I mentioned that about half of all economics departments in the US do not require calculus. Western State has made the choice to not require calculus in our economics major. Instead, we have students conentrate on writing and presentations. A few of the faculty here really embraced this idea and want to expand the use of case studies and to have students write substantially more, while other faculty members rolled their eyes at the idea of moving away from mathematics.
   I did mention that almost all economics students graduate with a second major which they thought was very useful but not workable in the Icelandic higher education system.
   The meeting ended with a discussion about how to attract more students and the need to 'brand' the major better. When a student graduates with a business degree or a law degree they are businessmen or lawyers. What do they call a student that graduates with a PPE degree? Not really a philosopher, nor a political scientist nor an economist. The term liberal arts does not really apply either and therefore it is difficult for students to embrace the term. Finally, there are no obvious career path for these students once they graduate.  
   Overall, I was completely blown away at how much their concerns echoed Western States concerns. It is very comforting to know that there are others going through the same issues but also somewhat depressing that there does not appear to be an easy solution to these issues.
   The afternoon progressed as it normally does for Shan and myself; working on our computers and around the house. The girls get home from school at 3:30 and we normally pick Spencer up at 3:45. Alex had wanted to hang out with her friends more and I suggested she try and do something with them after school. She took me up on it and didn't even come home to drop off her backpack. Instead, she ran around between friends houses, watched TV and YouTube videos, went to the store and bought candy and donuts before getting kicked out because it was closing time. At 5pm the yoga class started and both Shan and I went this week. Being my first yoga class, it was really fun and also somewhat strange. The room that it is held in is L-shaped and was very crowded with over 20 people participating. The last 15 minutes were spent lying on our back with really relaxing music playing. I think I might have fallen asleep but if I did I don't think I snored too loudly. The yoga instructor runs all of the  lifestyles activities on campus and she emailed us later to make sure I wasn't too sore. I'm hoping to attend more of the sessions in the coming weeks.
            Bless (Bye), Sally