Interest in customized majors increases

The number of students choosing to create their own major has increased exponentially over the past five or six years, said G. Scott Davis, coordinator for interdisciplinary studies at the university.

According to statistics provided by the Registrar's Office in fall 2005, there were only seven interdisciplinary majors. The number of students getting involved has grown rapidly each year, and this semester, there are 42 interdisciplinary majors, Davis said.

Davis said that these numbers would go down if, as is currently expected, the university establishes a major in public health, one of the most common topics among interdisciplinary majors.

He said that about half of the interdisciplinary majors were majoring in public health, while another common route was the bridging of some aspect of business with art.

"Basically any course at the university can be incorporated into an interdisciplinary major," he said. "We have had very good success working with the different departments to make this possible."

Davis, who has been a religion professor since 1994 and took over control of the interdisciplinary program in 2002, said that the interdisciplinary major is "for the extremely motivated and focused student who feels nothing available at the university captures what he is most excited by in his academic world.

"It is for those who want to do something different. It gives students the chance to combine a variety of different perspectives."

Sophomore Tanya Sushkova said that she had kept going back and forth on what she wanted to do and ultimately decided to create her own major so she could combine two of her passions.

"It was a constant flip-flop between biology and environmental studies," she said. "There was never a true path that I wanted to follow."

Sushkova said that after talking to Davis and Scott Johnson, associate dean for academic advising, she had decided that an interdisciplinary major was the best option. She said she had plannedto major in a mixture of environmental studies and international studies with a minor in French, but had not declared yet, as applications for interdisciplinary majors were not due until April 1.

On the application, Sushkova said that students had to indicate in approximately 500 words the focus of their major and the reason a departmental major did not satisfy their academic goals.

She said interdisciplinary students also had to ask two professors in different departments to be their thesis advisers, which was not required of other students who were not in the program.

"You have to have a very good relationship with your advisers," Sushkova said. "They are like your mentors. It is a lot more interactive than I thought."

When describing her experience so far in the interdisciplinary program, Sushkova said: "It is overwhelming at first, and you have to be sure that this is what you want to do. It is a lot more pressure but, so far, it is going great. I feel better about this than if I had only picked one major. It fits a lot better."

Senior Colleen Szurkowski said she had been pre-med her freshman year and "did not like science nearly as much as I thought, but I had always been drawn to helping people." The summer after freshman year, Szurkowski dropped biology and, not knowing exactly what she wanted to do instead, said she encountered the interdisciplinary major.

By the spring of her sophomore year, after having attended the required meetings and choosing her advisers, one of whom got her interested in psychology, Szurkowski said that she had declared as a health care psychology major focusing on the reason humans make certain decisions about personal health.

"I absolutely love it, and I am really happy," she said. "It is almost like an alternate education. It forced me to critically think about what I wanted to do, and now I only take classes that I actually want to take. I would encourage everyone to look into an interdisciplinary major."

Alice Chaosurawong, who graduated from the University of Richmond in 2011 and is currently doing production design for The Hill, a congressional newspaper based in Washington, she said majoring in journalism and studio art helped her get the position she had today.

"I knew since the 7th grade that I wanted to go into journalism, but it [the program] was too writing-intensive for me," she said. "I took the basic courses and then switched to art. That's when my passion for the design aspect of journalism grew."

Chaosurawong decided to create her own major to include both art and journalism, which she said helped her become a more well-rounded journalism student and specialize in editorial design.

"You have to be organized," she said. "It is pretty difficult to monitor yourself and your studies, but I do not regret my decision to do an interdisciplinary major at all."

Contact reporter Charlotte Brackett at charlotte.brackett@richmond.edu