Beginning in May 2015, Project Assistant Shana Melnysyn worked with PI David Porter on developing the proposal for the new 4+1 MA degree in Transcultural Studies (formerly called Intercultural Studies). Her primary tasks involved job market research; networking on campus to gain written support for the proposal across units and departments; searching U of M course descriptions to find existing courses appropriate to the program’s themes and goals; helping to develop concepts for the core course; and developing language for the revised proposal. For job market research, she searched job sites such as Monster, Indeed, Idealist, and Jobs.com. The primary search term she used was “intercultural.” In the summer of 2015, she compiled a spreadsheet of approximately 70 job descriptions seeking candidates with skills in intercultural communication and understanding. They spanned a range of industries and fields, in order to show the broad range of employers seeking such skills. She contacted several employers via email to inquire whether a graduate of our program would appeal to them, and the response was positive. A notable example was the hiring professional for a Coordinator for Multicultural Programs & Services at Virginia Tech, who said she would “absolutely” consider an applicant with our MA “very attractive,” and would definitely want to interview them. Shana also met with faculty and staff in leadership positions across LSA to explain the objectives of the program and ask for their support for the proposal. These included Michael Jordan, Director of Center for Global and Intercultural Study; Donna Wessel Walker, Associate Director of the Honors Program; and Robbie Routenberg, Interim Director of the Global Scholars program, among others. All of them expressed their enthusiastic support for the MA, and she wrote up brief summaries of their comments. She solicited and received letters of support from them, as well as from the chairs of each of the departments that would be affiliated with the program. She searched course descriptions from the last 8 or 9 years at U of M across the affiliated departments, choosing sample courses that directly connected with our themes of Translation, Comparison, and Connection. Drawing from this list, she also created several sample student pathways to show how hypothetical students might make their way through the program, building on particular majors and with specific capstone projects in mind. Finally, she kept abreast of broader national trends that show a resurgence of interest in the humanities and liberal arts as desirable skill sets for careers in everything from engineering to medicine. It was clear that a broad base of knowledge in literature, the arts, and language is still considered integral to building the skills employers want: written and verbal communication, critical thinking, and complex problem-solving using a variety of perspectives. The near universal emphasis employers tend to place on diversity and intercultural competence helped to strengthen the case for this MA as a useful addition to U of M. After several rounds of rewriting based on Shana's research, the College EC voted to approve the revised proposal last semester.
