Fifteen SESP students are putting their knowledge of social policy to the test, forming the NU Social Policy Reform Council in an attempt to overhaul the school’s curriculum.
Since they began assembling over the summer, SPRC members have surveyed student opinion, spoken with faculty and written a proposal with their desired changes, which they will present to School of Education and Social Policy administrators next week. Their catch-up meeting Monday night informed interested Social Policy students of the group’s activities and included newcomers in discussions of future moves.
SPRC members say they worry they may leave NU with little practical knowledge of social policy crafting and interpretation, and that students encountering basic policy-making tasks before graduation don’t know how to complete them.
“The great irony of this is that if we fail, it’s proof that they haven’t taught it to us,” SPRC member Jake Rosner said.
The SESP senior is one of the 15 core SPRC members, although he says there are about 50 students in total involved. The group’s goals – to strengthen the practical education social policy students receive and ensure students are involved in curriculum review – focus on patching holes that upperclassmen like Rosner have noticed in their own time at NU.
Junior Zoe Goodman, who has been a social policy major since her freshman year, faced an obstacle in the fall when working on her Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation application. When asked to write a sample policy brief, Goodman realized she knew almost nothing about that type of document. She turned to professors and friends with policy experience to complete the brief but said the experience showed her what was missing from her social policy education.
“I’ve been doing this for three years, and that we’ve never had to write a one-page summary of a problem, state a solution and then state obstacles to implementing that solution – that frightened me a little bit,” she said. “We’re all going to go out and get internships and eventually get real jobs and be real people, and I feel unprepared.”
In November, 100 social policy students – about 70 percent of the program – responded to a SPRC survey about the major and proposed classes. About 90 percent of respondents supported adding the two courses, “Introduction to Policy Analysis” and “Policy in Practice,” which would replace two currently required core classes, “Education Policy” and “Introduction to American Government and Policy.” More than 80 percent agreed the classes would fill gaps in the current curriculum.
In general, juniors and seniors felt more strongly that the changes were necessary than sophomores and freshmen did, but Rosner said part of SPRC’s mission is to improve communication among different classes. Nick Kazvini-Gore, a SESP sophomore who applied for the social policy major last spring, said the meeting Monday helped him understand problems within the program he hadn’t previously considered.
“From a young perspective, I can definitely see where they’re (SPRC) coming from,” he said. “I’ve only taken one or two social policy classes, so looking forward I’m trying to track where I’m going to go and what the core is like, and it seems kind of nebulous. (There is) not a direct path or a common vision of where (social policy) is supposed to be.”
Speaking with the daily in the fall, Susan Olson, SESP assistant dean of student affairs, said the school’s administration welcomes student input. SESP added three economics courses in the fall after students voiced concerns about the curriculum.
“We certainly take students’ feedback very thoughtfully,” Olson said.
However, Rosner said the group hopes to continue changing the curriculum by drawing from the close-knit SESP community.
“Pizza and candy jars don’t make us satisfied students,” Rosner said. “We have a good community in social policy, we have a lot of really great people, we have great activists. That’s a great start. But that’s not where we’re going to end.”
This perceived lack of vision was another concern for attendees at Monday’s meeting, who pointed out SESP’s lack of a strategic plan such as the ones released by NU administrators and the Kellogg School of Management in the past several months. SPRC members say they hope their proposal will encourage SESP administrators to create concrete goals for the school’s future.
“The department doesn’t really have a stated direction or a clear sense of where it’s going,” Rosner said during the meeting. “We’re in this really unique moment where we can step in and have a lot of influence and have a lot of say in what this department looks like.”
But Rosner and the others stress that their goals are so focused for a reason: urgency.
“Every year that you have someone graduating with a social policy degree without spending time on what policy looks like in the real world and how it comes about … it’s pretty irresponsible,” Rosner said.
