A new international affairs concentration could be available to International and Area Studies students by fall 2015, IAS Director of Undergraduate Studies Andrew Sobel announced at a Tuesday meeting of Sigma Iota Rho, the IAS honorary.

The new concentration was approved by the Arts & Sciences Curriculum Committee over the summer. Faculty expect the new concentration to join IAS’ four existing concentrations—development, Eurasian studies, European studies and global cultural studies—for the fall 2015 semester, pending an Oct. 10 vote by the Arts & Sciences faculty.

The proposal for the new concentration, created principally by Sobel and Jeremy Caddel, academic coordinator, was the result of a discussion sponsored by the Office of the Provost last March to develop the presence of international relations on campus.

Sobel and Caddel, who both hold doctorates in political science with specialties in international relations, noticed the striking absence of international affairs as a field of study at the University and wanted to change that.

“If you look around in the curriculum at Wash. U., we think there’s been a big hole in terms of international affairs,” Sobel said. “There’s bits and pieces, and we have strong international relations courses, but we don’t have tenured faculty in international relations like the universities in our peer group, and so our students would do work in international relations, but it wouldn’t count toward their major.”

Up until then, students with interests in international affairs pursued concentrations similar to it—in particular, the development concentration. Since it was created last year by combining the sustainable development and development studies tracks, the development concentration has made up about half of the more than 200 students who had declared majors in IAS.

“I think a lot of people who are currently on the development track had picked development because that was the option closest to international affairs before this one,” senior Lauren Paley, president of SIR, said. “But I know now that a lot of people in SIR are excited about it and are already talking about wanting to hopefully switch over or declare it as their concentration.”

Junior Molly Banta is among those anticipating the concentration.

“I didn’t want to look just at area-based studies; I wanted my studies to encompass the whole world, and I liked IAS because it let me concentrate on the relationships between countries,” Banta said.

“Development accomplished that to an extent by letting me take a lot of immigration courses, so I focused myself in international affairs,” she added. “I’m excited now to have a major that reflects the actual coursework that I’m doing.”

Still, reshaping the curriculum can create complications for students, as junior Sondra Anton experienced firsthand when the former Latin American studies concentration became its own major over the summer.

“Normally I would consider [the international affairs concentration as an option], but because I’m now an IAS major with the [global cultural studies] concentration, and I’m a [Latin American studies] major with a minor in Spanish, I probably won’t look at it,” Anton said.

With the SIR announcement and workshops to come, Sobel hopes to alleviate the burden of the curricular change by informing students of the change early on in the process.

“There likely won’t be any formal Bulletin announcement this year, but my goal is to introduce the concentration to SIR members so that they have the international affairs concentration in mind when they decide on their majors and concentrations,” Sobel said.

Sobel said the change reflects the IAS department’s emphasis on interdisciplinary work, bringing together relevant courses that would have otherwise been isolated by the existing boundaries between individual departments.

“We are a faculty that is mostly joint appointments in departments that are related to International and Area Studies like romance languages and history,” Sobel said. “And our courses come from all over the University, even some out of the college: some in engineering, some in architecture…A lot of courses in political science will count to the major, some in economics, a lot in anthropology, a lot in history, and the list goes on.”

Former students agree that the variety of courses in IAS allows them flexibility to find an area of interest within the program.

“I think it’s great to have more options so that students can explore their academic interests in IAS better than before. It’s a really good arrangement of what’s available,” 2012 University graduate Betel Ezaz said.

“I love the flexibility in how many different types of classes you can take,” Anton said. “I would definitely say that you can focus on areas that you want, but you can also take a lot of different classes because [International and Area Studies] is such a broad area.”