EFFECTIVE this school year, the Faculty of Arts and Letters will be housing the Asian Studies, Legal Management and Behavioral Science programs into two different departments—Humanities and Social Sciences, as Dean Armando De Jesus initiates this year’s major change in the Faculty.
Asian Studies will now join Philosophy and Literature in the Department of Humanities; while Legal Management and Behavioral Science will be placed together with Poliatical Science, Sociology, AB-BSE, and Economics in the Department of Social Sciences.
De Jesus said that the relocation of the three majors is part of the Faculty’s preparation for the possible integration of General Education (Gen-Ed) program to its three academic departments. The Department of Communication, formerly known as the Media Studies department, is the third academic department at Arts and Letters.
“There is a proposal that the programs handled by Gen-Ed will be transferred and integrated with our faculty’s Social Science, Humanities and Communication departments,” De Jesus told the Varsitarian. “But this proposed change is still at the planning stage.”
The three shifted programs were formerly assigned at the defunct Department of Interdisciplinary Studies which was previously chaired by Dr. Narita Ellar.
The three programs will be headed by new and incumbent department chairperson, namely Dr. Irene Lising of Humanities and Associate Professor George Garcia of Social Sciences, respectively.
However, the curriculum of the three programs will not change.
“The only change that occurred was the placement of these programs to different departments. This however did not affect the curriculum of the said programs,” De Jesus said.
De Jesus also clarified that the transfer of Literature and Philosophy was postponed to give way to other Faculty concerns.
“We thought of transferring these two programs to different departments in order to distribute the programs equally to the department heads. But this plan did not push through,” De Jesus said.
Philosophy and Literature were supposed to be transferred into the Social Sciences and Communication departments, respectively.
