Leadership of the Roy H. Park School of Communication announced Oct. 20 to students in the program that the communication, strategy and design (CSD) major will be phased out starting Fall 2026; the advertising, public relations and marketing communications (APRMC) major and minor will be revised to include courses from the cut CSD major.

While the CSD major cut reflects genuine program changes within the Park School, it also highlights a broader issue at Ithaca College: the Park School offers very specific, niche majors — like sports media, and writing for film, television and emerging media — that students pick and tend to stay within. When students are picking their majors, they are anywhere between 16 to 18 years old: a young age to choose what they want to do with the rest of their lives. They often have no idea what choosing their major actually means, especially when it is a niche specialty.

The institutional mission of the Park School emphasizes blending a liberal arts education with professional studies, but the setup of class requirements and the pressure of carving out their speciality orients students to stay on their major’s specialized path. The addition of the Park Pathways program greatly helped the overall liberal arts feel of the Park School, allowing students to figure out which major they want to continue their education within Park. Initiatives like this help the Park School stay true to its institutional mission, while giving students the room to explore and eventually discover their niche, instead of declaring it right away.

When students feel like they have to commit to a speciality sooner rather than later, they miss out on a holistic liberal arts education. IC should encourage its students, especially those with heavy courseloads, to engage with multiple schools to broaden their educational experience. The whole point of a liberal arts school is to have an interdisciplinary education, but when students take most of their courses in one area, they lose that knowledge.

Like at most universities, IC students are required to take “general education” courses, which comprise the Integrated Core Curriculum. The ICC is comprised of the Ithaca Seminar; perspectives courses in creative arts, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences; academic writing, diversity, quantitative literacy, and writing-intensive courses; as well as the culminating ICC capstone course. 

Media and communications work, as a whole, increasingly demands interdisciplinary fluency in things such as analytics, ethics and business strategy. Professionals are expected to engage with issues of equity and representation. A student who only takes Park School courses may lack some of these perspectives.

Liberal arts schools, like IC, have an organizational design with multiple schools to offer breadth; students benefit from cross–school coursework and interactions in ways that enrich both their professional and personal development.

IC should seize this transitional time to rethink how its specific majors — and the Park School as a whole — are structured. Students should be guided so that their niche does not become siloed, and the broader benefits of a liberal arts college, like IC are fully realized.