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S.98-5
I
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SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
OFFICE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC
MEMORANDUM
To:
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Senate
From:
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D. Gagan, Chair
Senate Committee on Academic Planning
Subject: ?
Faculty of Arts -
Curriculum revisions
(Reference: SCUS 97-36)
(Reference: SCAP 97-60a)
Date: ?
November 10, 1997
Action undertaken by the Senate Committee on Undergraduate Studies and the
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Senate Committee on Academic Planning gives rise to the following motion:
Motion:
"that Senate approve and recommend approval to the Board
of Governors as set forth in S.98 - 5 , the deletion of the Latin
American Studies Major Program."
For Information:
Acting under delegated authority the Senate Committee on Undergraduate
Studies approved the following curriculum revisions:
Change of requirements for the LAS Minor Program
Change of language requirements for the LAS Joint Majors
Change of requirements for the LAS Joint Majors
Changes to LAS/Sociology and Anthropology Joint Major
• ?
Any Senator wishing to consult the full report of curriculum revisions should
contact Bobbie Grant, Senate Assistant at 291-3168 or e-mail bgrant@sfu.ca

 
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY.
. ?
Monica Escudero ? ___ ?
.
?
BURNABY, BRITISH
LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES ?
CCLUMBIA
PROGRAM ?
CANADA V5A 1S6
Telephone: (604) 291-4507
FAX: (604) 291-5950
Summary
The following revisions to the LAS Undergraduate Program take into account the limitations
resulting from the dissolution of the former Spanish and Latin American Studies Department and
the creation of the Latin American Studies Program.
Given that the restructuring of the program requires, to a large extent, that we "rethink ourselves",
particularly in terms of orientation and future goals, we have decided to proceed in stages. We
believe it to be more reasonable and effective to introduce immediate changes where it is more
practicable at present --credit changes, scheduling and so forth— and where it will also have a more
immediate effect --increased enrolments, better utilization of resources, etc. Changes involving
long term implications --definition of streams and/or accomodation of course offerings to suit those
streams, for example-- will be done within the next two years.
Deletion of the LAS Major
This major change responds primarily to the need to downsize our program offerings in view of
• recent fiscal constraints in the university. The LAS Program basically had to choose between
retaining either the undergraduate major or the masters program, along with the joint majors and
minor programs. In view of the fact that Simon Fraser University offers the only masters program
in Latin American Studies in Canada, we consider that the lesser sacrifice is made by abandoning
the LAS undergraduate major. Historically, the proportion of students opting for a straight LAS
major has fluctuated between 25% and 33%. Our expectation is that after deleting this major most
of the students interested in LAS will simply opt for one of the nine (9) joint majors we have to
offer.
Furthermore, it is our belief that our graduates will be better prepared to meet market challenges
when combining the interdisciplinarity training provided by the LAS Program, if it is supplemented
by the disciplinary grounding provided by any of the joint majors that we offer with our associated
departments. It seems like the marketplace still has a hard time understanding interdisciplinanty,
and such grounding would make it easier for potential employers to identify the additional skills
that our LAS graduates would have to offer with a joint major. Furthermore, upon exploring what
other programs in North America do in this regard, we have found that most programs tend to have
a similar requirement of disciplinary grounding, whether they call it "disciplinary concentration" or
"disciplinary major" within LAS.
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