Makenna Cannon came to Emerson College in 2023 excited about their major. The now-sophomore in the health and social change program arrived on campus committed to a new initiative that promised a space where students could create lasting change to improve public health. But now in their fourth semester, the future of the program is suddenly uncertain, they say.
Nine of the 10 total students in the program met with Provost Alexandra Socarides on Jan. 30 to discuss the future of the major. The program has been confronted with low enrollment since its integration into the college and the question of whether or not to resume admitting first-year applicants this fall. School of Communications Dean Brent Smith was scheduled to be at the meeting, but did not attend. Smith did not respond to The Beacon’s request for comment.
“This major is what made me decide to go to Emerson,” Cannon said in an interview with The Beacon ahead of the meeting. “But now we’ve been left in the dark because they’re cutting it and half-assing it when it [costs] so much fucking money for this education.”
In the meeting, students questioned the provost about the college’s plan for the health and social change courses, communicated the need for more information and resources related to professional development, and conveyed feelings of redundancy regarding the content of the courses.
“The students who are currently enrolled in the health and social change major will be able to continue in the major,” Socarides wrote in an emailed statement to The Beacon. “Because the main faculty member in the program left Emerson at the end of 2024, and because the major only has 10 students in it, the college paused admission into the major for Fall 2025 while assessing the situation.” She wrote that Emerson has not yet made any final decisions on admission to the program past Fall 2025.
“The students in the health and social change major are really great about advocating for what they need and I thank them for being in dialogue with me throughout this time,” she added.
“I’m angry and tired,” Shiloh Kuppachi, a sophomore health and social change major, said. “I feel not advocated for, which is crazy because the main part of my major is advocacy. How am I learning about this but the adults aren’t?”
Several students and faculty members who spoke to The Beacon noted that the departure of Jessie Quintero-Johnson, an associate professor and health and social change curriculum coordinator, who joined the college in the fall of 2023, took a hard hit on the program. Quintero-Johnson, who left the college last December, did not return The Beacon’s multiple requests for comment.
“Jessie is an excellent teacher and excellent colleague,” Robin Danzak, a communication sciences and disorders faculty member, and the current faculty advisor for the health and social change major, said. “I think that we put Jessie in a difficult position, hiring her to run a new program that wasn’t yet off the ground.”
The health and social change major was first conceptualized by several former administrators, including former Provost Michaele Whelan and former School of Communications Dean Raul Reis, and delegated to faculty to work on between 2020 and 2021 (both administrators announced their departures from the college during the 2021-22 academic year).
Faculty within the Marlboro Institute, the School of Communication, and the School of the Arts were asked to foster the program and come up with a “uniquely Emerson” health major, according to Nancy Lyons, a faculty member in the Marlboro Institute, who was involved in the earliest conversations about the program. In March 2022, after a year and a half of two different committee deliberations, two new majors were announced: health and social change and media psychology.
Emerson officially began accepting applications for both programs for the fall of 2023. Cannon was one of four students accepted into the health and social change major the first year it was offered. Currently, 10 students are enrolled in the program; 23 are enrolled in media psychology. According to Danzak, enrollment in the health and social change program fell short of the 25 student goal.
“It was a challenging year because we had some issues with staffing in marketing and in web design. It was immediately post-pandemic,” Danzak said. “Looking back, there wasn’t really a clear understanding of what the major was about, and it was difficult to market. It didn’t quite fit in with the other Emerson majors.”
Socarides, who came to Emerson last July, said she could not speak to exactly how the major was designed because she wasn’t yet at the college; “That being said, I wouldn’t draw a clear line between who created it and low enrollment. Enrollment is always a result of multiple factors,” she said.
Avanika Lefcowitz, a junior health and social change major, said the most disappointing part of the major’s low enrollment is the loss of high quality education that students are paying for. Lefcowitz told The Beacon that they had been assigned the same documentary in four different health and social change classes.
“It just really speaks to the lack of cohesion in our curriculum and the lack of communication among professors,” said Lefcowitz, who wrote an opinion piece last November for The Beacon outlining their frustrations with the program. “We spend our time watching YouTube videos of health policy experts instead of learning from health policy experts. I could’ve just watched a YouTube video instead of paying for this school.”
Lefcowitz pointed out that many of the required major classes have open enrollment, allowing students with no previous knowledge to take the courses and forcing professors to repeat foundational concepts. The faculty teaching health and social change “don’t belong solely to [that program] and very few have actual public health training,” Lefcowitz said.
“In every other major, the classes stack on top of each other. They have prerequisites,” Lefcowitz said. “Each class I have at Emerson for health and social change, we relearn the basic concepts. We can’t actually get into advanced study because each class is starting from the ground up.”
In the meeting, and in several emailed statements, Socarides assured students that those currently in the major will be able to complete all of the courses required for the degree. The provost said the health and social change program’s two capstone courses would run as directed studies due to the small number of students. Alternatively, students could take honors or interdisciplinary courses to complete the capstone requirement.
According to faculty and students, the loss of the Engagement Lab, a social impact collective, directly affected the course options available to health and social change students. The health and social change major was “closely aligned” with the Lab, Danzak said, noting that Quintero-Johnson taught one of the capstone studio classes for the program.
“When [the Engagement Lab] was closed, it felt like yet another thing that the college was being hypocritical on,” Briana Primavera, a junior double-major in health and social change and communication sciences and disorders, said. “You can preach diversity, equity, and inclusion and say that we have all these social movement connections and coursework and advocacy work and projects in college, but then you close one of the major things that did that [work].”
The Engagement Lab was closed in August 2024 in response to budget cuts caused by enrollment declines. It previously offered between four and six classes each semester under its Social Impact Design minor, a series of interdisciplinary courses that allow students and community non-profit partners to collaborate on social change projects.
“We need the actual hands-on experience working in these fields with these people,” Ty Cooper, a junior who was an internal transfer to the major in fall 2023, said. “I don’t want to do something individually and not have somebody guiding me. We need to be in partnership with our staff and with other people.”
In an email sent to the health and social change students, Socarides assured students that in the future “the college will use a set of guidelines and requirements for starting an academic program.”
“When beginning a major, the college will know that there is a clear demand for the major and have a fully comprehensive sense of what it will need to thrive,” the provost wrote in an emailed statement to The Beacon. “While using these guidelines to create new programs, they can also give a way of assessing what is and is not working about an existing program.”
As for what’s next for the major, nothing’s certain. In February, Socarides plans to meet with faculty to continue to discuss the program’s future, while students meet with Smith.
“My dream would be a refund. We deserve some sort of money back,” Lefcowitz said. “But for all future academic programs, they should start them with much more support.”
Editor’s note: Adri Pray is currently enrolled in HE301: Environmental Change and Human Health with Makenna Cannon, Tyler Cooper, Shiloh Kuppachi, and Avanika Lefcowitz. Pray did not interview Cannon, Cooper, Kuppachi, or Lefcowitz for this story. Merritt Hughes is a resident assistant in Piano Row with Briana Primavera. Hughes did not interview Primavera for this story. Lefcowitz is also a resident assistant.
