OUR VIEW: Time to break up HASS?

As graduation creeps closer, seniors in every college at Utah State University are searching for jobs. The upcoming Career Fair and recruiters brought in by the Career Center are great resources for job-hunting students. But students in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences are at a slight disadvantage with only one job developer for the entire college – the largest on campus.

While some students rely on the services the Career Center offers, many students in HASS are completely on their own in the career search.

Students in other colleges, like the College of Family Life with three departments or the College of Engineering with five, are more likely to find jobs because the job developer has a more specific focus and fewer majors to worry about. Majors in HASS range from print journalism to sociology to music. The 15 departments in HASS are hardly interrelated. The college name implies that it encompasses three separate areas – Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Is HASS not three colleges combined into one?

Stan Albrecht, the former dean for HASS, was recently named as the new provost at USU. This means a new dean will soon be named. Isn’t this a perfect time to evaluate the way the college is set up and reorganize – or split – it?