Things have been busy around the balcony this past Fall and Spring semesters. We have a record number of majors this year, and anticipate that growth to continue going forward. We also had a large group of BA and MA graduates in commencement ceremonies last month. Faculty continue to excel in their teaching and research, and we have committed many hours this year to the department's future as well as to our students. Lots of students and planning means the balcony has been full of energy and activity.

We have also established the REL Alum Support Board, whose inaugural members will be meeting soon to discuss ongoing plans developing the board and its support for REL. If you are interested, contact Steven Ramey, the department chair, about opportunities with the REL Alum Support Board.

Learn more below about some things our students, faculty, and alumni have been doing!

Students in REL are contributing research in multiple venues. As has always been the case, particularly in seminars and independent studies, students work on individual research projects, analyzing sources and constructing arguments that demonstrate persuasive writing.

A variety of students presented their research, much of it coming from those classes, at our annual REL Student Research Symposium at the end of March. We have been showcasing student research at the annual symposium for years, and this year's event included 4 panels of oral presentations and then ten students presented and discussed posters of their research. To learn more about the event, check out the Research Symposium page and the Barefield College of Arts & Sciences' article about our students.

Over the past five or so years, faculty have also increasingly incorporated students into their larger projects. Students develop not only basic research skills but also technical and computational skills as well as exposure to project management/collaborative strategies that are required when involving a team of researchers. This past year, more than two dozen students were contributing to faculty research projects digitizing materials, modeling artifacts, developing text analysis (both computational and traditional), and creating publicly accessible materials. These collaborative research projects enable larger faculty projects and prepare students for a variety of futures.

Double alum Caity Bell visited campus in March to talk with students about her experiences applying her Religious Studies training to her career as an archivist, currently working at Landmarks of Dekalb, a museum and archive in Fort Payne, Alabama.

At Landmarks, Caity applies her background in Religious Studies in multiple ways. Her research on narrative construction within Religious Studies empowers her to consider different ways of constructing exhibition narratives for museum-goers. Her archiving work has combined questions of classification and research skills (with which any student from our program should have experience), as she hunts down missing information about items that have been donated to the museum over the years. 

Check out the blog post to read more about her application of REL to being an archivist. 

And we are not done! We have exciting plans for the future that have developed significantly this year.

A major innovation in our graduate education is underway. A new REL PhD program is currently advancing through the University’s approval processes. Designed to reimagine doctoral training for a rapidly changing world, the program applies lessons learned from our Social Theory/Digital MA to teach students advanced research & computational skills aimed at diverse career pathways across academia, industry, and public service. If approved, it will begin enrolling students in Fall 2028, with the first cohort expected to graduate in May 2032! Stay tuned for updates as this forward-looking initiative progresses.

We also have developed a new graduate certificate "Computation and Society" that MA and PhD students across campus can add to their program of study. This certificate is scheduled to become available in Fall 2027.

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