Majoring
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What You Need to know About majoring in ICPS |
Before you proceed, you may want to think about what an ICPS program will require of you in general terms. The ICPS Program demands careful planning and much independent study with a minimal amount of faculty supervision; it is intended for students who have acquired a solid and strong academic background and who are already fairly definite as to their future goals.
Freshman
and Sophomore Year
Sometimes students find they can do everything they want to
do by pursuing a regular program in political science,
economics or history. You should speak with your adviser and
possibly the chair of your home department about what your
options are. It is important early on to picture the
different possibilities available in your final two years at
Reed and decide what is best for you. By choosing a
traditional major, you will have regular supervision. You
will also be required to take a broad range of courses in a
particular discipline. By electing to be an ICPS major, you
sacrifice breadth in a particular discipline for more choice
of courses in departments outside your major. This often
means that your path through your home department major will
be constricted, with fewer course choices in that major. It
also means a greater burden falls to you to synthesize the
variety of courses you plan to take outside your department.
And whereas students writing a thesis in a department can
take a lot for granted in terms of literature and problems,
ICPS students need to think about how and why their thesis
is interdisciplinary.
That is why, when you become an ICPS major, we require an explicit proposal and justification for your proposed course of study. We highly recommend submitting a draft of your proposal to your adviser. Your proposal must be submitted to the ICPS Committee by the end of your sophomore year. Members of the Committee may then interview you briefly to clarify your goals and the means you have chosen to achieve them. Acceptance is not automatic. The Committee may feel that your goals might be better served through a regular major and may strongly advise you to pursue that course of action. Hence, the importance of carefully thinking through your proposal.
Junior
and Senior Year
The ICPS Junior Qualifying Examination is a thesis proposal
for the ICPS Committee. It is normally four to six
type-written pages. In the proposal, the student defines the
thesis topic, discusses its significance, explains the
methodology to be used in researching the topic, and
presents a short critical bibliography of relevant secondary
works and/or primary resources. Two members of the ICPS
Committee read the thesis proposal and meet with the student
for an hour oral discussion. The oral discussion will cover
various subjects, including the topic's scope, viability and
significance.
Normally, students take the ICPS Qualifying Examination at the same time as they take the Junior Qualifying Examination in their home department (the second semester of their Junior Year). If the candidate successfully completes the thesis proposal and mini oral, the ICPS Committee admits the student to the senior year and ICPS 470 (the thesis course).
It is important to take both Qualifying Examinations seriously. If you do not pass the Qual in your home department, you cannot be admitted into the ICPS major. This is true even if the ICPS Committee accepts your thesis proposal. In this case, you must pass the Qual in some other home department in order to become an ICPS major. Likewise, you may might not pass the ICPS Qual itself. The Committee may might feel it might be more appropriate for a student to complete the thesis in the home department, and the student will become a regular major (political science, economics, history, as the case may be). The Committee might consider the proposed thesis topic not sufficiently located in the area of international or comparative policy studies. For example, a student might propose a comparative study that compares two historical periods in a country rather than two different countries or the topic proposed might not be sufficiently interdisciplinary and in fact should be treated in the context of a particular discipline. This is why it is wise to speak well in advance with ICPS faculty as to what constitutes a viable thesis topic.