The Western Kentucky University Board of Regents will vote to suspend the Master of Arts in Folk Studies and the Bachelor of Science in Agriculture during their quarterly meeting Thursday.
The Master of Arts in Folk Studies has been offered by the university for over 50 years and has been lauded by faculty and staff for its impact on local communities in Bowling Green.
Erika Brady, a Professor Emeritus with the Folk Studies and Anthropology department, said that the university and communities in Bowling Green and other parts of the region will lose a valuable resource if the regents vote to suspend the program.
“Nothing can take the place of a dedicated graduate program for really knowledgeable and intense work in an area,” Brady said.
University spokesperson Jace Lux said in a statement to WKU Public Radio that in the fall of 2022 “faculty members in the Master of Arts in Folk Studies program made the decision to close the program to new admissions. Currently enrolled students will be permitted to complete their degree.”
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If the master’s program is suspended, undergraduate offerings would not be affected. The university will continue to offer a Folklore minor and general education Folklore classes for students.
But according to Brady, it was through the master’s program that students and faculty were able to focus the most attention to projects and work they were doing in the community, while also appealing to future graduate students.
“The graduate program has been the hub, the platform,” Brady said. “There will be folklore classes that will continue to be taught, but limiting them to undergraduate classes as a kind of general enrichment really limits the impact that this program has had and could have continued to have.”
Bowling Green’s diverse population will also be losing valuable community and economic resources, according to Brady.
“Graduate students and faculty have worked closely with the communities to develop not only understanding but economic opportunities for recent immigrants,” Brady said. “We’ve had a number of individuals whom we’ve trained as community scholars as part of our outreach in the graduate program.”
Meanwhile, the university offers two programs to obtain a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, with one operating as a stand-alone program. The other requires additional courses which has caused confusion for students. According to the university, in an effort to increase efficiency surrounding the two programs, the agriculture faculty voted to close one program, but an agriculture major will still be offered even if the WKU regents vote to eliminate the program on the chopping block.
The board of regents will meet at 1 p.m. Thursday, May 4. The session is open to the public and will be streamed live.
Jacob Martin is a Reporter at WKU Public Radio. He joined the newsroom from Kansas City, where he covered the city’s underserved communities and general assignments, reporting at NPR member station KCUR. A Louisville, Kentucky native, he spent seven years living in Brooklyn, New York before moving back to Kentucky. He is a graduate of the University of Louisville.
