Georgetown’s Program on Justice and Peace announced on its website Tuesday that it will offer a JUPS major beginning fall 2014. The new major is intended to complement the program’s existing certificate and minor options, according to Director of the Program on Justice and Peace Randall Amster.
“We know that a number of juniors have expressed interest in declaring the major, so we will indeed be graduating the first major class next spring,” Amster wrote in an email to the Voice.
Amster was not able to estimate how many juniors would declare, but wrote “we expect the major to grow steadily in the years to come, and the minor/certificate to grow as well–especially since the latter will no longer carry a thesis requirement.” He added JUPS currently graduates 15 to 20 minor and certificate students each year.
Maggie Ferrato (COL ’15), Gianna Maita (COL ’15), and Kyla McClure (COL ’15), who began advocating two years ago for the JUPS major, worked with JUPS faculty and College administrators to craft a working proposal.
“We submitted it to the [College] Executive Committee for feedback, and then to a subcommittee for additional refinement. In the end, the proposal was unanimously approved by the ExCo, and finally approved by the Board of Directors this semester,” Amster explained.
According to Maita, the major will offer students the “freedom to pursue what they are passionate about,” rather than declaring a major of less interest and “only feeling passionate about their minor in JUPS.”
The three students’ advocacy “fortuitously” occurred at the same time as the hiring of two professors, Elham Atashi and Randall Amster, according to JUPS Professor Mark Lance. “For the first time we had the staffing to make a major possible,” he wrote in an email to the Voice.
Lance added JUPS has multiple new courses in the works, including a research methods course, and will finalize them in the coming year.
Maita stated she plans to graduate as a JUPS major. “I arranged my courses so that I could declare as soon as it was possible,” she wrote.
