Talk:MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Merger

Per [1] on WikiProject Universities, departments and degree programs within universities lacking non-affiliated citations generally do not fulfill notability criterion for organizations. Because Wikipedia is not a directory and this article is just an indiscriminate, incomplete, or outdated list of notable as well as non-notable faculty members and alumni, it should be merged into its entry on MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. When the entry on that article has grown in scope or notability (by including history, research programs/centers and accomplishments, notable faculty and alumni), it may warrant an independent article at a later time. Barring any future debate, the merger will occur on August 28, 2007. Madcoverboy 05:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

The strongest possible objections. I certainly agree that in general we should not have articles on individual university departments. But sometimes we should. And a singularly distinguished department such as Economics, --one of the best in the world, at a university that is also one of the best in the world, is obviously another matter entirely. I would in fact think that for universities of the stature of MIT, many of the departments would be considered notable. We obviously need to discuss the point in general, or it will be a long battle, university by university. I think the concept wanted is "world-class", but I think the criteria to be taken into account need discussion. Attacking individual sets of articles may not be the way to do it. Incidentally, notability is permanent, so if a department ever was notable, it remains so. DGG (talk) 09:18, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Potential sources for improving this article have been listed at Talk:Massachusetts Institute of Technology#Proposed merge with MIT School of Humanities.2C_Arts.2C_and_Social_Sciences. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 11:59, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

The discussion has been auto-archived; I have copied them over to here as a starting point for discussion, and to highlight some pointers for research. As it stands now, the article really sells short the significance and accomplishments of SHASS and its people, which are overshadowed by much better-known STEM achievements. Just as another example, the Architecture Department received a top world ranking for its third year in a row. Reify-tech (talk) 22:51, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Previous discussion of proposed merge with main MIT article

The stub article about the SHASS has not had any third-party references since 2007, nor was I able to find any that provide significant coverage on DuckDuckGo, Google Books or Google News. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 10:56, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose SHASS is a great school inside one of world's greatest universities. Academic institutions don't show up well on the search sites mentioned by Qwertyus with cursory searches. Part of that, is that the School has changed names over it's history. Yes, more work is needed on the article. — Lentower (talk) 00:08, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Can you tell us what the previous names were? QVVERTYVS (hm?) 07:44, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

No longer in memory, so I would have to research them, which any editor can do. Reify-tech and I have listed quite a few sources below. — Lentower (talk) 08:23, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't have time for in-depth content editing on this article or on WP at this time. I am willing to review the work of others. — Lentower (talk) 08:23, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose – A history of SHASS and its predecessors is here: http://shass.mit.edu/inside/history. SHASS is an umbrella organization which often gets ignored by news reports which instead focus on individual departments, sections, and labs under its aegis, and may not even mention the overall brand.

To improve the article, it should include some sense of the diversity and depth of the fields of knowledge embraced by SHASS. For example, many people are not aware that the MIT Media Lab (in the School of Architecture and Planning) has significant SHASS faculty participation. A lot of SHASS research is interdisciplinary, both internally, and working with other MIT departments and labs. Programs like Knight Science Journalism; and Science, Technology, and Society have developed notable reputations. The Economics (Course 14), Political Science (Course 17), and Linguistics & Philosophy (Course 24) departments have gained worldwide recognition for their faculty and graduates, including Nobel Prize winners.

The SHASS newsletter Said and Done (http://shass.mit.edu/magazine/pastissues) would be one starting source for info. People, projects, and awards mentioned there could be websearched for third-party reports and commentary. Another starting point could be an annotated listing of the 20 or so Fields of Study featured on the SHASS website (http://shass.mit.edu/fields). The current stub article certainly has plenty of room for improvement; if expanded properly, it would make this main MIT article even longer than it is now. I can't take the lead on improving the SHASS article, but would be willing to pitch in with some help. Reify-tech (talk) 14:23, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

The Tech (newspaper) is archived, indexed, and searchable for the entire history of SHASS, and should have some useful citations for expanding this article. I also suggest checking Tech Talk, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Harvard Crimson, etc. — Lentower (talk) 08:23, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose per Lentower. Stranger195 (talk • contribs • guestbook) 02:40, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Withdrawing suggestion to merge as it seems to consensus is to keep a separate article. Let's discuss potential improvement of the article on its own talk page. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 11:37, 13 September 2015 (UTC)