Ohio State’s Columbus campus is offering four new degrees this fall, and the list is expected to grow.

On the undergraduate level, students can now pursue a Bachelor of Science in constructions systems management and a Bachelor of Arts in public affairs.

The Bachelor of Science in construction systems management has been a long time coming.

In the late 1980s, the commercial industry started to “grab students,” said Ann Christy, associate professor in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering.

As a result, the agricultural mechanization and systems major was split into two: agricultural systems management and construction systems management.

Though construction systems management was offered as a major in the early 1990s as part of the Bachelor of Science in agriculture degree, only about a dozen students enrolled. By 2004, the program had grown to 195 students.

Today, the program has 423 students.

“I was in political science and I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, sitting in an office all the time. I find this a lot more interesting,” said Matt Minneman, a third-year in construction systems management.

The push for a degree program was driven by students.

“Our students were saying, ‘We’d like to have our own identity,'” Christy said.

“The industry wanted it, too,” she said, citing AEP as a company that loves the department’s students. “It was a lot of little pieces coming together.”

The Bachelor of Science in construction systems management was approved in December 2009 and had its first three graduates in March 2010.

Christy said the three students quickly fulfilled the new major’s requirements, as there were overlaps from their previous majors.

The recent re-design of the curriculum will make the quarters-to-semesters switch a “pretty straight transition,” Christy said.

Christy expects success from the students who have chosen to pursue a degree in construction systems management, she said.

Though the construction industry has experienced a downturn, she said the students in the program are above the university’s average in terms of finding employment after graduation, particularly in the commercial and industrial sectors of construction.

A Bachelor of Arts in public affairs is now offered through the John Glenn School of Public Affairs.

Like the construction systems management degree program, the public affairs degree program was largely student-driven.

“The folks that were most instrumental in getting the program up and off the ground were students,” said Trevor Brown, associate director for academic affairs and research and an associate professor at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs.

The new degree program was approved in May and has 32 students enrolled.

Chris Adams, coordinator of undergraduate programs at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, has also seen growth in Baker Hall East’s John Glenn Institute Living Community, which has existed for about 10 years. The living community has nearly tripled in size during the past three years. In 2008, it consisted of 25 students. Now it houses 70.

 

“Public affairs is a pretty fast-growing field at the undergraduate level across the country,” Adams said. He named Indiana University and the University of Michigan as two schools with similar programs.

Adams said that although few high school students likely are aware of the major, there are many students interested in leadership and government service.

 

“With the resources we have here — with (former Sen. John) Glenn and the Glenn School … and the state capital — it just made sense for the next step to be to have a public affairs undergraduate program,” Adams said.

On the graduate level, a master’s degree in environmental and natural resources was introduced in the fall.

 

According to the School of Environment and Natural Resources’ website, the program “provides an applied graduate degree for practicing professionals and others who want to enhance their professional competency in environmental and natural resource science and management.”

The program differs from a Master of Science in that it is a non-thesis degree that requires 55 credit hours and no GRE if the student’s cumulative undergraduate grade point average is 3.0 or higher.

As of Sept. 14, seven students were enrolled in the program, and 11 more were expected to begin Autumn Quarter.

A doctoral-level program for translational science is now open to students who are enrolled in or have completed the doctorate of pharmacy program.

Combining the two degree tracks allows students to earn both degrees in less time.

According to an OSU news release, the program’s goal is to “translate research from the laboratory to the patient.”

The University Senate met Thursday to discuss a new education specialist degree in teaching and learning and a new master’s degree in plant health management.

Both degrees were approved by the Graduate Council and were reviewed and approved by the Council on Academic Affairs at its Friday meeting.