Do you grow tired of having to gratify your seemingly insatiable curiosity for knowledge within such a bleak, soulless institution? Are you sick and tired of strolling into class, only to find a herd of comatose students staring blankly ahead into space as they file into a perfect grid of desks like repressed workers in a Southeast Asian sweatshop? Ever wish after the countless fortunes you’ve showered into the school, you would at least have freedom to take courses you actually want to take, from teachers that actually want to teach, with classmates who actually want to learn?
Well there’s good news—you get to keep your soul. The San Diego State master of arts in liberal arts and sciences is an interdisciplinary graduate program that offers its students intellectual freedom.
The program allows students to theorize their own academic plans and develop whatever rare idiosyncrasies they’ve kept trapped inside. The program also offers an imaginative array of atypical 600 and 700-level classes, providing refuge for minds itching to escape from an often mundane and humdrum education.
Program Director Bill Nericcio elaborated on the inspiration underlying the unconventional master’s degree program.
“The nature of a major is often that you’re forced to take classes that maybe you don’t want to take. My program is designed to eliminate that.” Nericcio said. “We call it an M.A. in curiosity, because you actually build your menu of courses from across the university.”
Professors in biology, theater, English and the history of science conceived a graduate-level program 25 years ago that was built around collaboration and innovation. Originating as “MALA,” the program offered seminars taught by two professors. Integrating specialists from unrelated subjects, the program sought to tear down the imaginary walls separating various academic fields and erect new structures of thought in their place. Like the clownfish and the sea anemone, unusual pairings can often prove advantageous to both sides. If variety is the spice of life, this radical approach to academia is the habanero pepper of the master’s degree.
Flash forward 20 years to 2008, MALA affixed its “S” in sciences when Nericcio stepped down as chair of the English department to fill the seat as director. Since he became the department director with less than a dozen graduate students, the population of active students has quadrupled. Word of mouth also led to a number of applicants from University of California Los Angeles, Irvine and Berkeley. Although the department increased in number, funding declined because of budget cuts.
“The problem is a little thing called the budget crisis, as there is no way San Diego State University would allow a seminar to take place that uses two professors to serve 15 students,” Nericcio said. “We’d have to have some sort of grant from Qualcomm to afford it now—which I’m working on because I think the original model for MALA was perfect. It was beautiful, it was intellectual and everything that we should be doing at a university level.”
The graduate program has since undergone a bit of a renovation and now sponsors courses on the cutting edge of ethnic, cultural, and American studies. MALAS courses offered in the past include “Technosexualities,” “Hip Hop and Spirituality” and “American Panopticons.” This semester, there is a cultural seminal class about vampires. Labeling the department as “eccentric” would be an understatement.
“One of the analogies I make to MALAS is that we’re some sort of combination of Wired Magazine and boingboing.net.” Nerricio said. “But while we’re very high-tech—certainly no Luddites—as a program we’re definitely focused on the classroom experience, the seminar experience of graduate students with a professor. You just don’t learn watching a computer screen.”
With applicants from across the spectrum, the program is well suited for students with just about any background.
“We’ve got people focused on music, performance artists, creative writers, film documentarians … we even have a woman who talks to dolphins doing a thesis on the psychology of human and dolphin interaction,” Nerricio said.
Of this bag of mixed nuts was grad-student Alexandra Hunt, who gave me her thoughts on the program’s extreme diversity.
MALAS graduate student Alexandra Hunt believes the interdisciplinary cultural studies approach to scholarship opens up possibilities rather than closes them.
“Interdisciplinary scholars have to go above and beyond to understand the theories and approaches of different disciplines, breakdown their artificial boundaries and put them into conversation with one another,” Hunt said.
A new world calls for a brave new system of education. It’s important for students to ask themselves whether they’ve spent college engaged in the things they love or if they’ve sacrificed them in order to earn that prestigious and reputable scrap of paper called a diploma. Instead of picking from a list of degrees past generations already did, students should hone in on what truly inspires them to their core and settle for nothing less.
For those curious, visit the program’s phantasmagorical website at malas.sdsu.edu or contact Nericcio at
bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu
