The School of Arts and Sciences’ Entrepreneurial Program (SASEP) provides faculty with the opportunity to apply for awards comprising grants and support for innovative educational programs, products, and services that generate new revenue streams and extend the impact and reach of SAS. Faculty from the departments of Asian Languages and Cultures, Spanish and Portuguese, Economics, English, and Philosophy have been granted SASEP awards in Round 2 of the program, along with awards going to the World Language Institute and the program in Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies.
The projects supported in Round 2 of SASEP are:
Drs. Richard VanNess Simmons (Chair) and Wendy Swartz of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures won an award to establish a master’s degree program in East Asian Studies, with a choice of concentration on China, Japan or Korea. This program parlays the strength of a faculty of international renown that can offer courses and training in literature, history, religion, philosophy, linguistics, and language. “A master’s program in Asian Studies will directly and immediately address one of the principal aims of the Rutgers in China Initiative,” noted Dr. Simmons. This program is envisioned as being especially attractive to students from China, for whom an American graduate degree from a top-rated school is highly coveted.
Building on the success of its current online offerings and its longstanding and well-regarded Translation program, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese will create an online English-Spanish translation course entitled “Advanced Grammar and Introduction to Translation.” The course is envisioned by Drs. Tom Stephens, Soledad Chacón, and José Camacho as part of a future Translation Studies online sequence that would lead to a certificate—an approach developed in coordination with the World Languages Institute. The WLI, under the leadership of Marion Yudow, received an SASEP award as well. Their project is to design and implement an online translation course encompassing Arabic, Chinese and Spanish from two of the WLI’s existing, cross-offered translation courses.
“There is a consensus emerging that educational institutions must do a better job educating students with respect to financial literacy,” observes Dr. Thomas Prusa of the Economics Department. To address this need, he has designed Personal Finance and Financial Acumen, a fully online class that will be open to all Rutgers undergraduate students. The focus of the course will be on providing basic tools of financial planning, insurance, borrowing, tax planning, and managing money—skills every person should have, but many lack. While geared towards enhancing the financial literacy of Rutgers undergraduates, most of the concepts to be taught in this course are firmly rooted in economic theory and methods.
Dr. Tisha Bender, Assistant Director of the Writing Program and an experienced online educator, will work with Dr. Kurt Spellmeyer of the English Department to create an ambitious two-phased distance learning initiative that also has a focus on China. In the first phase, Dr. Bender will conduct online classes that train faculty at Jilin University in China to adapt their pedagogy to teach effectively online. Once these overseas faculty have taken this online training, they will team-teach with Dr. Bender a variety of international online courses. Half the students in each course will be from Rutgers and the other from Jilin University. Dr. Bender notes that this scenario offers “profoundly valuable opportunities to our Rutgers students in New Jersey, as they would learn so much more than just the course content by learning some aspects of the culture and cultural perspective of their overseas peers.”
Finally, SASEP awards will be used to advance two programs that are already up and running.
The Philosophy Department will expand its master’s program in Legal Philosophy. Under the leadership of Dr. Doug Husak, the program enrolled two students this year on a trial basis, and is looking to grow. Created in close consultation with the Associate Deans and faculty at the law schools in Newark and Camden, this program serves as a catalyst for cooperation among SAS and those schools. Based in the Department of Art History, the Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies master’s degree program provides a unique opportunity to study heritage preservation within local, national, and global contexts. Dr. Archer St. Clair Harvey will use an SASEP award to raise awareness about the program nationally to expand its applicant pool.
Projects supported by the initial round of SASEP awards have taken enormous strides in their first year:
The Jewish Studies Department successfully launched its new master’s degree program in the fall of 2011 and is enrolling high-caliber students, one of whom—Jason Gosnell—was recently profiled by Rutgers Today. The program is being actively promoted online, in print, and on the air—including radio spots on WNYC (New York) and WHYY (Philadelphia).
The online “Introduction to Ethics” course, developed and taught by Dr. Holly Smith of the Philosophy Department, proved to be extremely popular, attracting both on- and off-campus students. Online discussion forums were especially successful, Dr. Smith reports: “Their general attitudes towards the questions might be the same, but the discussion post gives them an opportunity to think it through in better detail, and to respond to each other more thoughtfully as well.”
The master’s degree program in Global and Comparative History from the History Department is off to a strong start as well, with enrollments far exceeding projections. Program Director Dr. Michael Adas reports that students represent a broad spectrum of professional and academic aspirations, including those seeking admission to top-tier doctoral programs as well as current and prospective teachers.
Dr. Darrin York’s General Chemistry eLearning project from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology has developed a beta version of a highly interactive online tool that teaches self-guided problem solving. The project has earned additional funding from other sources and is aiming towards full-scale deployment to the University’s undergraduate population in the fall of 2012.
The master’s degree programs in Religious Studies from the Department of Religion and in Sports Marketing from the Department of Exercise Science and Sports Studies are wending their way through the University’s new degree approval process and are projected to begin admitting students in the fall of 2013.
