Incoming freshmen will have a slightly thicker course catalogue in 2002-2003.

A global studies minor was approved last year by Student Senate and will be a part of the multi-disciplinary studies section of the College of Arts and Sciences, said Margaret Cassidy, interim associate dean of Arts and Sciences.

The department chairs decided last year that there was an apparent need for this type of minor on campus, Cassidy said.

“This provides students an opportunity to look at issues in a global context in different subjects,” said Karl Markgraf, director of international education. “We suspected there would be interest for this type of minor.”

Freshmen who enroll in the minor would be pursuing lines of global issues, and have more focused general education credits with a global emphasis, Johnson said.

Results from a student-interest poll showed that there seemed to be enough interest to support the addition of this minor, Markgraf said.

The global studies minor consists of 24 credits, all but four of which must be taken in general education courses.

“We’ve been working on creating this minor for quite awhile,” said Dale Johnson, associate dean of the College of Business. “The thought is that if students pick the right GE courses, they could end up being close to having this minor.”

The courses required for the minor cover a variety of topics such as history, political science, geography and economics – courses that a normal freshman or sophomore probably would take anyway, Johnson said.

For the electives required by the minor, students can choose from courses in a variety of sections in nearly every discipline.

As with most minors, at least nine of the 12 elective courses have to be completed in 300 to 400-level courses.

“It has been a collaborative effort in many areas to bring this together,” Cassidy said. “We found that there was not only an interest from the students, but from the faculty as well for this type of a program.”

“We felt that there was a need to get (students) to follow a certain path to get them to a goal, “Markgraf said. “This (minor) enables students to concentrate on a goal while filling their GEs.”

“There is no major in the works for this, at least not yet,” Johnson said, adding that there are existing majors that deal with international issues.

The focus is on getting freshmen and sophomores to complete the GE courses and with that, earn a global studies minor, Johnson said.

“We’re trying to pull some courses together for juniors and seniors,” Johnson said, adding if a student’s catalogue year is earlier than 2002-2003, they still have the option of pursuing the minor by changing catalogue years.