Students in the Master of Social Science Degree program aren’t the typical graduate students. 

They have been military personnel, high school teachers, government officials and even foreign royalty. 

The program, more than 30 years old, allows students to spend a total of only four weeks at Syracuse University to obtain their master’s degree. Beyond that, they maintain contact with faculty through e-mails and phone calls as they do their course work.  

‘There’s a lot of distance-learning programs,’ said David Bennett, meredith professor of history and faculty chair of the program. ‘But this is different. This gives students a chance to interact with fellow students, meet with faculty members, create a sense of community, while also not abandoning their careers.’

But in the past year, the number of student applications to the Master of Social Science Degree program, part of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, has declined. The decrease is the result of administrative changes at the university, the impact of the recession and conflict overseas that have deterred foreign students.

The program admitted seven students in the past year, but took 16 students in 2009 and 20 students in 2008, said Elizabeth Ryan, who works in program support for Executive Education Programs in Maxwell, in an e-mail. ‘We are not seeing the applications like we were before.’

Students in the program can complete their degree in as short as 18 months or take up to seven years, so the overall number of students in the program is still high. Since 2008, when Executive Education Programs took over the program from University College, there have been 120 students in the program who graduated, were admitted or are currently continuing their degree, Ryan said.

The administrative switch that took the independent Master of Social Science Degree program from UC to Executive Education Programs hurt the enrollment in the program, said Stephen Webb, professor emeritus of history and one of six faculty members teaching in the program. He said the program is also still learning how to market itself effectively on the Internet.

The number of foreign students has seen a particular decline.

Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the program had a ‘tremendous array of highly accomplished foreign students,’ Webb said. 

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud of Saudi Arabia graduated from the Master of Social Science Degree program and is now the 19th richest man in the world with a net worth of $19.4 billion, according to Forbes.com.

But since Sept. 11, Webb said there haven’t been as many students from abroad attending the program. Most of the students in the program today are U.S. citizens with jobs as secondary school teachers or serving in a branch of the military, Webb said.

Despite the decline in student applications and enrollment, the Master of Social Science Degree program is providing its students with flexible courses and personal components not found in other distance-learning and online courses.

The program was first organized in 1972 by Webb, Bennett and Michael Barkun, professor emeritus of political science, to create a graduate program for adults with busy careers who couldn’t live on campus for a year, away from their families or jobs.

Jeremy McKenzie, who has three classes left before graduating from the program, has taken classes online at the University of Maryland and said online courses can’t compare to SU’s Master of Social Science Degree program.

‘With the online program, there is no connection,’ said McKenzie, who is a helicopter pilot with the U.S. Coast Guard and is stationed in Atlantic City. But with the Master of Social Science Degree program, he said there is contact with professors that makes learning more personal.

Before joining the program, Ian Frady searched for a respectable university offering a master’s degree program that would fit his schedule.

‘The Syracuse program was the best out there in my eyes,’ Frady said. 

Frady, a special operations Air Force pilot who is working to finish his degree this semester, added he has learned about topics he’s interested in and about topics that are relevant to his career, such as the nation’s success and failure overseas. 

Laurie Sedgwick attended her first residency at SU this past July. She said she was blown away with the program and the high level of interaction with classmates and professors. 

‘The residency was the best two weeks of my year,’ said Sedgwick, associate director of the Career Management Center at Cornell University’s Johnson School.

There are five core areas in which students can take classes: the Europe core, U.S. history core, developing nations core, international relations core, and the war and society core, according to the program’s website. 

To obtain their master’s degrees, students must complete 30 credit hours, Bennett said. All students must take a mandatory three-credit residency seminar and must complete six credit hours in three different core areas for a total of 18 credits, he said. The remaining 12 credits can be completed through other courses the student is interested in or through independent study projects.

‘I personally had three or four of my independent study programs published as books,’ Bennett said.

Course work varies by professor, but Bennett said most courses require between three to five papers on assigned topics and heavy reading. When papers are sent in, professors read them over and make numerous comments before sending them back to the student.

To complete the total of four weeks at SU necessary for the degree, students spend two separate two-week periods in Syracuse. During the students’ first two-week residency, they spend a two-day weekend at Minnowbrook Conference Center, SU’s conference center in the Adirondack Mountains, as part of a mandatory three-credit residency seminar.

The trip to the Adirondacks for lectures and discussion provides a more relaxed atmosphere and a chance for the students and faculty to get to know each other better, said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, director of the Middle Eastern studies program.

On many occasions, students attend the weekend at the Adirondacks more than once and even return after graduating to get to know the new students of the program, Boroujerdi said. 

‘Up at Minnowbrook, all of us give lectures on the semester theme,’ Bennett said. ‘We never know what we’re going to talk about. We never tell each other what we’re going to talk about.’

Although professors are hoping the program regains its past strength, Bennett said, it’s easy to see there are some ‘extremely gifted people’ in the program. 

‘We’ve tapped into a remarkable student body of people who have had, in some cases, extraordinary, distinguished careers meeting together in these residencies,’ Bennett said. ‘It’s a remarkable mixture.’

jdharr04@syr.edu

Published on September 28, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jon: jdharr04@syr.edu