The creation of a new Islamic Studies program on campus may depend greatly on the availability of financial resources, if the recent passage of other academic programs is any guide.

The most recent additions to Oberlin’s course catalog have been the Cinema Studies program in 2002 and the Comparative American Studies program in 2003. Although both disciplines existed at Oberlin as courses, concentrations and individual majors, the programs were created to provide a more disciplined and integrated approach to the two fields.

Both programs were created after a lengthy process involving the Educational Plans and Policies Commission and the College faculty council.

Both initiatives cost the College a signicant amount to launch, according to administration officials.

“Once the faculty comes up with a proposal [for a new academic program], the EPPC decides the educational validity of the program,” committe chair Grover Zinn said. “The faculty council decides whether we have the resources to create the program.”

In recent months, a petition for the introduction of Islamic Studies circulated by the Muslim Students Association has gained momentum with students and faculty members, increased by the recent hiring of Khalid Medani.

In order to be approved, a proposal must be both valid and viable, Zinn said.

Gender and Women’s Studies professor Wendy Kozol is Associate Director of the CAS program and was involved with the program from its inception.

The CAS proposal was introduced at a time when the College was more prosperous and the board of trustees had just allocated a large sum of money to hire ten new faculty members, Kozol recalled.

“We were incredibly fortunate,” Kozol said.

Kozol was invited to participate in CAS nearly three years ago, when the program was still in its initial stages. “A group of faculty wanted to put together a program like ethnic studies, which finally evolved into Comparitive American Studies,” she recalled.

Although the faculty was vitally involved in the conception of CAS, Kozol points out that student support was important. “There was definitely student initiative,” she said. “So there was lots of mutual energy and enthusiasm [about the program].”

Kozol remembers the realization of the program as a “fairly lengthy process,” in which the interested faculty were asked a number of questions by the EPPC.

“The procedure, although it seems laborious at the time, is very productive,” Kozol said. “You have an idea in your head but it really takes shape when you have to put it on paper. [We gained] new insights as a result of those questions. It may have seemed slow or frustrating but in the end we had a much more defined and developed program [than was originally conceived].”

Although the administration is supportive of new initiatives such as Islamic Studies, the process would have to face a very different economic climate than the one in which CAS was formed, she said.

“The hiring of Politics professor Khalid Medani shows that the College is very interested in developing a curriculum based on Islamic or Middle Eastern studies,” Kozol said.

“[Approving a program] depends on whether we have the resources,” Zinn said. “The required resources include things besides hiring new faculty. For example, establishing Cinema Studies is not just a question of teaching. It means investing a great deal of money in the facilities for viewing films, production courses and new media production positions in the Arts deptartment.”

The Cinema Studies program was added last year. According to Director William Patrick Day, the program did not face the problems that other programs may have to deal with during their formation.

“I think the reason was that we had a number of core people already interested in doing cinema,” he said. “We brought together Cinema Studies as a program, and once we hired [Geoff] Pingree we were set.”

Aside from senior tutorials and honors projects, the program is offering only four courses this semester, and none at the intermediate level. Day attributes this to “a peculiar leave pattern” in Cinema Studies faculty, as three of the five faculty members are on leave this fall.

“We don’t expect to run into [this problem] again,” he said.

“Our electives are expanding,” he said. The program will also see the return of emeritus film professor Daniel Goulding as a visiting faculty member next semester to teach courses on the films of Ingmar Bergman and Roman Polanski.

“Actually, we’re doing quite well,” Day said.