Sara M. McKinley ’03 recognizes that some of her future goals are uncommon. As she sits in the Quincy dining hall, clad in a red T-shirt with the word “heartthrob” scrawled across her chest, she smiles broadly as she discusses some of her aspirations for senior year. She leans in slightly, with the posture of someone who is about to divulge a secret. Her brunette curls shake slightly as she speaks.
“For some reason, I’m just really looking forward to my senior oral [exams],” she says. “I feel like I could just talk about what I’m studying forever and never really tire of it. What I’m doing is uniquely my own, and this whole process has made me very invested and passionate about my academic work.”
But McKinley says she has not always expressed such a passionate interest in academics. As a sophomore she was trekking through life at Harvard as a biology concentrator. Looking back on the experience, she says she remembers sitting through lectures in the Science Center that were cold in a literal and physical sense—she never felt she got a chance to really know her professors and she was constantly amazed at the building’s apparent lack of high-quality heating.
McKinley says that seems like a long time ago now. She is one of roughly 20 students at Harvard who is pursing a special concentration, a degree program that allows her to develop a uniquely personal field of study. McKinley currently studies “Culture, Disease and Public Health,” a field that allows her to consider questions such as the worldwide AIDS epidemic from cultural and social perspectives. Her Harvard experience these days is anything but impersonal, as she has already designed five classes that meet her unique interests. She has also changed her formerly large-class-dominated schedule, and two of her tutorials and current independent study were entirely one-on-one.
“The truth of the matter is this concentration has really made Harvard for me,” McKinley says. “I love what I’m studying, and that for me is the equivalent of a godsend.”
The Committee on Degrees in Special Concentrations has been “making Harvard” for a handful of students since its founding in 1971. According to Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education Deborah Foster, a Folklore and Mythology professor who also heads the special concentration program, a special concentration is ideal for students whose “academic interests don’t fall squarely within one discipline.” In the 1980s, the discipline served many students interested in Latin American studies. More recently, in the wake of Clinton-era cumbersome health care proposals, a swath of students pursued special concentrations in health policy. Foster says her program always draws from a unique pool of students ready to deal with the distinct benefits and burdens that come with blazing their own trails.
“This is really the most satisfying place to be,” Foster says of her roughly seven-year tenure as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Special Concentrations. “Inherently, the students who come into my office have to have a special kind of motivation to pursue things at Harvard that they haven’t already been shown how to do.”
In fact, motivation is the primary prerequisite for a special concentration. The application process weeds out less zealous applicants, as each student must turn in a 10-page application to be reviewed by the 14-person Special Concentration Standing Committee. The committee meets to review applications three times each year and each time rejects a substantial number of students. Rejected applicants often fail to distinguish a unique program of study or to convince the committee they are not just trying to devise a plan that excuses them from tedious introductory coursework in another field. According to Foster, there is no cap to the number of students who will get approval for a special concentration—the most crucial component behind the decision is the presence of a “truly original idea” in the proposal.
“I always try to figure out with the student if what they think they want to do can be found in any other department,” Foster says, motioning to a stack of new applications on her clean desk. “I might suggest something they hadn’t even thought of, maybe a joint concentration or an inter-departmental program that would give them a greater degree of flexibility. The crucial thing though is always to hunt for that idea. A special concentration is just not for the student who doesn’t know what they want to do.”
But students driven to pursue a special concentration must not only know what they want to do, they must also find someone on the Harvard faculty who wants to sponsor their original plan of study. Jelina Pejkovic ’03, a special concentrator who studies Architecture and Urban Design, says the search for an adviser can be arduous, especially if the student doesn’t find someone who is really ready to stand behind them before the committee and to emphasize the specificity of their program. Many students, however, find the process of searching for an advisor to be a valuable social lesson, as it teaches them to engage with Harvard’s academics.
“I had to be really driven from the moment I decided to do this,” says Eve A. Schaeffer ’02, who has a special concentration in Native American Studies. “It is so very difficult to find an adviser willing to make a commitment to you, and it was especially hard for me because I had to initiate the process immediately when I transferred here. I just kept pushing myself though, and every time I was confronted with someone new, I would ask them for the e-mail address or contact info for anyone else they thought could help me.”
Emmanuel J. Simons ’04, who studies Music and Neuroscience as a special concentration, says his initial level of motivation also showed itself through diligent e-mail writing. Simons came to Harvard with a strong background in music; he had participated in choirs and studied classical piano since he was seven years old. When he became interested in neurobiology as a first-year, he was “faced with the conflict of wanting to study music, but realizing he wasn’t ready to choose between [his] two interests.” After reading various articles on music therapy while still in his first year, Simons began e-mailing medical professionals at Massachusetts General Hospital in pursuit of an adviser. By the beginning of his sophomore year he was a special concentrator. Simons says this motivation served him well.
“Having a handpicked adviser is just an incredible experience,” he says. “I’ve done absolutely incredible things with my adviser, and right now we are co-authoring a paper on music and neurobiology that will hopefully be published this summer. I don’t think I could really find this sort of experience anywhere else.”
One of the interesting issues surrounding special concentrations is that some programs of study pursued by concentrators can be found—and are sometimes full departments, granting degrees to hundreds of students— at other universities. Simons says there are music therapy programs at several institutions across the country. And Pejkovic spends roughly 26 hours of each week bent over models and blueprints in an MIT studio. But Foster argues that there is still something unique and valuable in pursuing such areas of study at Harvard.
“Harvard simply doesn’t do preprofessional study, and there is something to be said for that,” Foster says. “When students decide to study architecture through this program, they aren’t just learning how to design buildings, but rather they look critically at the construction of buildings within society. And that isn’t to say that other programs at other schools don’t do that as well, its just that Harvard will always leave you with that solid footing in the field of liberal arts.”
Yet some students pursuing special concentrations are concerned about how grounded their self-designed programs are. McKinley says that one of the main complaints people have surrounding the department is that students graduate from their field without a specific disciplinary area of expertise.
Foster argues that students in the special concentration field must be prepared to accept not only an individual approach to their studies, but also an individualistic approach to academic life at Harvard generally.
“One of the first things I ask every student who comes through my door looking for a special concentration is if they are ready to sacrifice some of the collegiality and cohesion that comes with being a part of a department,” Foster says. “Many students might think it sounds attractive to design their own syllabi for tutorials, but that can also be a burden to students who would rather have more guidance in their decisions.”
Simons, McKinley, Pejkovic and Schaeffer all cite Foster as a wonderful resource within the program who has helped them to balance the challenges and difficult course decisions that come with having a special concentration. Simons said that after Foster helped him find a way to take Introduction to Modern Greek and a concentration requirement that met at the same time, he became convinced that she was concerned with
“students’ education in the broadest sense—[their] development as a person.”
But a single adviser doesn’t make a home. Despite the individual attention in advising, many of the students cannot get around the fact that their academic experience lacks a certain camaraderie. Despite Special Concentrations’ annual dinner and a smattering of small events they hold each year, Pejkovic feels like she has not found an academic home at Harvard.
“When I go to MIT, there is always this sense that I am at home, this is where I belong,” Pejkovic says as she rests her slender hands on a Slavic-language architecture magazine. “The people in my studio—those people I work with everyday—they really know me the best. I’m not always sure though that I am really missing out on something that is found at Harvard. Besides my friends in Folk and Myth, I’ve never really heard of anyone feeling a real academic bonds at Harvard.”
For students involved in special concentrations, the motivation to create something new bonds them in some way to students who may follow down their paths in the future. As a senior, Schaeffer finds herself reflecting on the academic program she designed for herself in the past and the programs future ethnic studies enthusiasts may draft in the coming years. Currently, Schaeffer is the only special concentrator explicitly focusing on ethnic studies. She realizes actions such as last weekend’s protest, which criticized, among other things, University President Lawrence H. Summers’ failure to establish an ethnic studies certificate, may only increase the tide of student interest in pursuing special concentrations in ethnic studies in the coming years. She says she would value the opportunity to pass her reflections on to future ethnic studies enthusiasts.
“I feel that debt to all the future students who might be interested in my area,” Schaeffer says. “At the end of this year, I’m putting together a comprehensive packet with all the things that worked and didn’t work during my studies. This is an experiment, and I want my work to be there for all the others who are brave enough to take their own academic path.”
