The department of sociology and criminal justice, having hired two full-time anthropologists last semester, will soon be offering students an anthropology minor. Grounded in an expanded, more specialized curriculum, as well as plans for fieldwork opportunities, the minor will be the first degree Saint Louis University has offered in anthropology in at least 15 years.

“There’s been a continual interest on the part of students (in anthropology classes) over the past few years. They seem to be very popular classes with people. The material is very interesting, so they fill up very quickly,” said Katherine MacKinnon, Ph.D., one of the new anthropologists, who specializes in physical, or biological, anthropology.

She explained that the department will offer both new courses as well as specialized existing ones. “Now, for the minor, we’ll offer more of an anthropological perspective than a sociological one,” she said. “We will expand on courses that have been offered by reaching out to various sub-disciplines.”

Future plans also include fieldwork opportunities. MacKinnon will be offering a course in primate behavior in Nicaragua during the summer of 2004. The department’s other anthropologist, Lorenzo Covarrubias, Ph.D., who specializes in cultural, or social, anthropology, conducted studies in Mexico in the past, and will most likely offer fieldwork there in the future.

“For undergraduates, I think it’s very much a beneficial thing to have access to fieldwork opportunities,” MacKinnon said. “It helps students really see how anthropology can be applied.”

The revamping of the anthropology program at SLU comes after more than a decade of near dormancy. The department of sociology and criminal justice was formerly called the department of sociology and anthropology, but as the change indicates, criminal justice’s popularity rose and SLU saw its last full-time anthropologist leave sometime in the mid-1980s, according to Department Chair Charles Marske, Ph.D.

SLU continued to offer anthropology courses, which remained popular among students, especially as cultural diversity options. Marske and Kathryn Kuhn, Ph.D., both sociologists, have been largely responsible for keeping those courses alive.

Through SLU 2000, a source of funding for more specialized, inquiry-based courses, the department was able to hire MacKinnon and begin offering three sections of anthropology taught by Kuhn, MacKinnon and Marske.

In a written statement yesterday, Covarrubias said of the new plans, “The ideas of cultural relativity, respect and sensitivity have their origins in the anthropological endeavor. And yet, what I find most rewarding is that if SLU was once a fertile ground for this discipline, it can surely be again.”

The new emphasis on anthropology, Marske said, will create, “a range of courses where students can study anthropology, where students can see real-life examples, where students can access resources in [the St. Louis] area.”

“The global perspective sets it apart from other social science fields,” MacKinnon echoed, noting that those other fields often emphasize American culture and society.

With regard to future improvements, an anthropology major is still years away. It would require employing more specialized professors, a step the department is unable to take. A more conceivable advancement, MacKinnon said, may be hiring an archeologist, who would round out the department, representing the third basic anthropological area of study.

“Today students realize they are living in an increasingly global world,” Marske said. “They’re going to be coming into contact with increasingly more diverse people. I don’t know any discipline offering more cross-cultural studies than anthropology.”