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New ethnography certificate program proposed

A proposal for an ethnography certificate program has been submitted to the Office of the Dean of the College.

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All of the members of the faculty in theanthropology department either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment on the potential certificate program until it is formally voted on and accepted or rejected.

Deputy Dean of the College Clayton Marsh ’85 declined to comment, as did University spokesperson Martin Mbugua, who noted that review of the proposal is ongoing.

Anthropology majors supported the potential institution of a certificate program inethnography, which is the study of human cultures and races.

Divya Farias ’15 said she thought the certificate would be relevant to students outside anthropology who could apply lessons from ethnography in other ways.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Farias said, adding the certificate program could be helpful to students pursuing independent work. “I have talked to a lot of other students that are not in the anthropology department that are really interested in ethnographic methods.”

Aleksandra Taranov ’15 said she thought ethnography is key to the study of anthropology as well as being relevant to other disciplines.

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Olivia McShea ’15 said ethnography was her favorite part of anthropology and that it should be a certificate.

Norman Stolzoff, president of Ethnographic Insight, a company that applies anthropological methods to marketing research, explained that ethnography is relevant in a number of contexts. As well as being a field of academic study, ethnography can be easily applied to business, he said.

“It’s basically taking the tools of cultural anthropology and the research methodologies and branding it under the name of ethnography, but it includes a host of different techniques,” Stolzoff said. “I’d say the hallmark is participant observation, which is the observational, experiential form of doing social science research.”

When asked why he thought a certificate in ethnography would benefit the University, Stolzoff said ethnography is the practical application of anthropology.

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“All too often, anthropology departments have been very strong in the theoretical study of anthropology with not enough emphasis on how anthropology can be used in the world to impact organizations, to impact companies, to be a part of the process of innovation and design,” he explained.

Students not majoring in anthropology could also benefit from studying ethnography, he added.

“There are so many fields that can benefit from the holistic experience and methodology of observing context and interacting with people from different backgrounds and having a way to interpret and analyze that in ways that are beneficial, in ways that we can make changes that benefit all of us,” Stolzoff noted.

While the ethnography certificate would organize ethnography into a formal course of study, the University has offered a number of ethnography courses in the past and is offering three this semester. The three offered this semester are ANT 301: The Ethnographer’s Craft, ANT 407: Ethnography of Law and SOC 550: Oral History and Ethnography.

Last semester, it offered ANT 300: Ethnography, Evidence and Experience and ANT 368: Ethnography of Schools.