So Long, Silos

International student Shuyi Long, a second-year MA in China Studies student, is thinking about becoming a journalist. She chose the master’s program at SAIS as a way to sharpen her understanding of global politics and international relations.

Long says she appreciated the school’s size and location in Washington, D.C., and its alumni connections and resources. And she has particularly prized the program’s rigorous grounding in economics, languages, and regional studies — the sort of skill set a future journalist needs for covering governments and businesses in the coming decades.

All that said, “Most of the people that I know are from China studies or are doing work related to Asia,” Long says of her first year at SAIS. “I don’t know anyone from Middle East Studies or from European Studies.”

Addressing those silos in the student experience is central to an ambitious “reimagining” of SAIS’ flagship master’s degree program. An administrative reorganization and new curriculum, it represents the first significant rethink of the core curriculum in 50 years.

This three-year effort grew out of the recognition from leadership and the faculty that the postwar global challenges that inspired Paul Nitze and Christian Herter to create a school for international studies have evolved — and so must the institution that is training tomorrow’s global problem-solvers.

“The world is changing, and so are we,” says Filipe Campante, vice dean for education and academic affairs at SAIS and a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of International Economics.

Today’s issues require interdisciplinary responses, he notes. “If you think about climate change, that requires knowledge that wasn’t built by a single discipline but bringing ideas together around a problem. That bringing together process was hindered [at SAIS], I think, by the departmental structure that siloed expertise apart,” he says.

“The goal here, in both the curricular and organizational aspects, is to break down these silos and allow more integration and interdisciplinary thinking. We want all the expertise that we have at SAIS to interact and integrate.”

Under the new curriculum, incoming master’s degree students will pick a functional focus (Security, Strategy and Statecraft; Development, Climate, and Sustainability; International Economics and Finance; States, Markets, and Institutions; or Technology and Culture) and regional focus area (Africa, Asia, China, Europe and Eurasia, Latin America, the Middle East, or the United States). All students will receive training in five core competencies — data analytics, economics, geopolitics, leadership and ethics, and research methodology — as well as greater access to internships and co-curricular activities that are important elements of career building.

Students will also be taught by a single, unified SAIS faculty that isn’t dispersed into 19 different specialty departments. Some support staff positions were downsized in this streamlining — the reimagining impetus was driven by both financial and academic concerns — but it also centralizes SAIS’ individual program resources to provide all students with better access to experiential learning opportunities.

By centralizing academic trips and professional development opportunities under one office, the reorganization “encourages project-based learning and makes sure all students receive these opportunities, not just students in specific concentrations,“ says Julie Micek, assistant dean for academic affairs.

Curriculum changes were informed by three years of internal and external reviews of SAIS, including faculty interviews conducted by Janice Stein — a professor of conflict management (and former dean) at the University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy — and student feedback collected over the years. The findings were presented to the faculty at a retreat earlier this year, and Dean Eliot Cohen put together a committee, chaired by Campante, which came up with an outline of proposed changes. Cohen approved those changes in May.

SAIS’ administrative restructuring happened over the summer, and students matriculating next academic year (2021–22) will start with the new curriculum. While the school’s eventual move to its new home at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW didn’t specifically inform the changes, Micek notes that it is opportune that SAIS is getting its proverbial house in order before relocating.

“When we move, multiple JHU divisions will be in the same building, which allows more opportunities for collaboration. We will have our curriculum set and our faculty organized before we make that move,” she says.

The ultimate goal is to give students more flexibility in building their degree programs while ensuring they all receive the broad training in SAIS’ foundational expertise. Such a grounding will be key for SAIS graduates as they embark on future careers, says Campante.

He points out that the world is currently enduring a moment that makes such problem-based thinking a necessity.

The COVID-19 pandemic “illustrates how big, international problems can emerge,” he says. “Is it an economic problem? Is it a geopolitical problem? Is it an environmental problem? Is it a public health problem? The answer is yes, it’s all of those things — and more.”