Certificate programs provide a unique opportunity to specialize

Each April, when sophomores declare their majors and choose certificates — like minors at other universities — the smaller certificate programs seem to come out of the woodwork.

Certificate programs draw students from many different areas of academia. The Program in African Studies is no exception.

Ten seniors are participating in the African studies program this year, according to Emmanuel Kreike, director of the program. Though the majority are history majors, there are an increasing number of interested students from the natural sciences.

The Program in Neuroscience did not start with a wide range of students, however. Begun in 2001, it was initially set up for psychology and molecular biology concentrators, said the program's director, Lynn Enquist.

But the program was designed so other departments could "plug it in" to their major program.

The opportunity to obtain a neuroscience certificate may extend beyond the psychology and molecular biology departments to other sciences, but, according to Enquist, it would be difficult for humanities students to obtain the certificate.

One impediment to other certificate programs is the language component required by some of them. A student must know Arabic, Hebrew, Persian or Turkish to pursue a certificate in the Program in Near Eastern Studies or the Program in Language and Culture, said Erika Gilson, director of the programs.

"For either sequence, you need to have at least a two year sequence in this language. And somebody who is an engineer might not have the time for that," she said.

Then there are those programs that attract students involved in many and often disparate academic pursuits. Certificate students in the Program in Hellenic Studies may work towards multiple certificates, according to its executive director, Dimitri Gondicas.

"And sometimes many students actually do more than one program. They will do Hellenic studies and European cultural studies, or Hellenic studies and Latin American studies or creative writing — these kinds of combinations," he said.

Many of the programs make it easier for students to fulfill the requirements of a certificate by letting them fuse their certificate studies with their concentration. The Program in African Studies requires that a certificate student's senior thesis pertain to Africa or a topic with a significant relationship to what is going on in Africa, Kreike said. This makes it possible for students from departments such as history as well as those from the sciences to participate in the program.

"If your thesis is, say, microbiology and you look at issues, scientific issues that are related to such diseases that are such important factors in Africa, we also can approve that. Actually, we have done that in the past," Kreike said.

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Gondicas said students in the Hellenic studies program combine work in the discipline in which they major with more focused work on Hellenic studies.

Study abroad is an important part of some of these certificate programs. The programs in African studies, Near Eastern studies and Language and Culture all strongly encourage it, said their directors.

"[Study abroad] is certainly a very strong component, in particular because it solidifies the language — linguistic ability — but also for the exposure," said Erika Gilson, director of the Programs in Near Eastern Studies and Language and Culture. "Just about everybody does it, really."

The last few years of tensions in the Middle East and surrounding areas have complicated study abroad for her programs, though.

"Right now, most of the areas are off limits. Usually, we always had people in Israel. We always had people in Cairo in Egypt. We've had them in Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Turkey," Gilson said.

She said she is hopeful the situation is temporary.

"Will it down the road affect us? I hate to even think about it because being in situ is certainly important," Gilson said.

The Program in African Studies doesn't have many programs up and running right now, Kreike said. Roughly 20 students study at the University of Cape Town in South Africa each year, but not all of them are certificate students in the program.

"And there are other possibilities, too, which are less formalized. They are usually through relationships that Princeton has with other universities — like we have people in Niger sometimes, in Senegal," Kreike said.

All of these programs are relatively small at the moment. Gilson said the Program in Language and Culture has not had a certificate student in all the years she has been departmental representative — close to a decade. There is one student pursuing a certificate in Hellenic studies this year. Of the programs mentioned here, the Program in Neuroscience had the largest number of participants, by far — 27 students.

But some of the programs have made significant advances in recent years.

"There are quite a lot of classes now being offered [in the Program in African Studies] because the faculty who teach Africa at the University has doubled in the last five years," Kreike said.

The Program in Neuroscience was only able to get off the ground last year.

"The program got started really sort of from the grassroots. The undergrads kept telling the molecular biology and psychology departments that they wanted to do more in neuroscience," Enquist said.

The African studies program is looking to build up even more in the next two or three years by introducing a junior seminar, Kreike said. He said this junior seminar would differ from others by being interdisciplinary.

"We want to accommodate the interdisciplinary background. We hope to expose you to other disciplines in this class, obviously. But if you're a microbiology major, you obviously would want to do your paper — your research paper — in an area related to microbiology, so we will accommodate that. So, that will be very different from, say, a history junior seminar," Kreike said.

Undergraduates work their ways into these certificate programs through a variety of means. Some become interested in a particular program after running across an advertisement. Some may be encouraged by their home departments to consider a certain certificate. Or others, like Bryant, may be inspired by a professor.

"I mainly became interested in Africa just through a class with a professor, Emmanuel Kreike . . . I've taken several of [his classes], and through that I've just acquired interest in Africa," he said.