Due to dramatic growth in the number of students and faculty as well as a desire to attract more students, the University of Wisconsin dance program has been upgraded to a department.

The dance program currently operates under the Department of Kinesiology in the School of Education. Current Program Chair and future Department Chair Jin-Wen Yu said although the program resides in this department, it is mostly independent in they way it functions. Because it has been so self run, Yu said the change from program to department will not be dramatic.

“Really, just the name is changing,” he said.

Director of Academic Programming Jocelyn Milner said the distinction between a program and a department lies in the way it is governed. With a department, faculty members have their own specific rights and responsibilities.

Milner said while the switch will not affect most students on a day-to-day basis, it will raise the program’s status, which could end up attracting more faculty members.

Yu said the change was partially inspired by an external review in 2005 where officials from other dance programs around the country observed UW’s and made recommendations for its future. He said the reviewers strongly recommended changing from a program to a department.

Another inspiration for the change, Yu said, was the hesitation observed in prospective students. He said when students came in to audition both they and their parents sometimes questioned whether they wanted to study dance at a school with no dance department.

“Students ask, ‘Why is this just a dance program, not a dance department,'” Yu said.

UW junior Zechariah Ruffin is currently working toward a certificate in the dance program. She agreed because when she enrolled the program resided in another department, she was hesitant about making it her major. Had dance been its own department at that point, she said she may have gone for a dance major.

She added she thinks her certificate will have more merit in the dance world after graduation because of the switch.

“I think it’s going to make the dance department more recognized,” she said.