A number of high-profile undergraduate and postgraduate courses were approved by Trinity’s University Council last Wednesday, including an MSc in Comparative Social Change which will be delivered jointly with University College Dublin (UCD), The University Times has learned.
Other courses approved include the proposed moderatorship in Middle Eastern and European Languages and Cultures as well an MPhil in Philosophy.
The MSc with UCD will serve as the latest manifestation of the “TCD-UCD Framework for Collaborative Taught Programmes/Courses” which was approved by the University Council in early 2014. The two departments, which both feature in the top 100 in the world in the QS rankings, already cooperate extensively on the Sociological Board of Ireland and through the delivery of a long-standing joint lecture series.
The position of course director is to rotate every three years between Trinity and UCD, with Prof Daniel Faas, Head of the Department of Sociology at Trinity, to take up the job for the first three years, The University Times understands.
Though Trinity will serve as the centre of administration for the programme, it will be taught and supervised jointly by the two departments. Indeed, students undertaking the programme will be registered with both UCD and Trinity and the master’s degree and associated postgraduate diploma will be awarded jointly by both institutions. The course will be administered by a committee comprising module co-ordinators, student representatives and a course co-ordinator from the partner institution.
The proposed BA in Middle Eastern and European Languages and Cultures will see students take on not only a European language from a broad range encompassing French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish and Russian, but also choose from amongst the Middle Eastern languages Hebrew, Arabic and Turkish. The course will also feature language specific area studies modules that will combine with existing European Studies and Near and Middle Eastern Studies modules that will provide a cultural backdrop to the students’ linguistic education.
The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, which put forward the proposed course, will also provide a number of subjects unique to the degree programme in the form of modules that will explore the social, cultural and political interaction between Europe and the Middle East, focusing on how each civilisation has been perceived in the eyes of the other.
In October, The University Times reported the difficulties that language courses in Trinity had in filling their student quotas for the 2014/15 academic year. Italian, with a quota of 30, only successfully registered 25 students, while Russian attracted just over a third of its 36-student quota, registering only 13 students.
The new MPhil programme in philosophy follows the favourable external review of the course proposal by Prof Duncan Pritchard, Head of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. It will bring Trinity’s philosophy department, which is ranked in the worldwide QS top 100, in line with the practice of most other major Irish and UK universities which offer master’s programmes. The course content is to feature six taught modules, including one on the celebrated philosopher and Trinity alumnus, George Berkeley.
An MPhil in philosophy had previously been mooted around this time last year. Last November, the then-Head of Philosophy, Prof Vasilis Politis, told The University Times that he had expected they would be able to advertise the degree by January 2014, although it took until now for it to reach University Council.
