In Harpur College, where biology and psychology are among the most popular majors, a few students every year choose to differ and strike out on their own.
Out of Binghamton University’s 11,706 currently enrolled undergraduates, 30 have broken away from the conventional path to establish their own majors under the Individualized Major Program. Ten additional students are in the process of getting their IMP approved this semester.
The program provides students with the academic opportunity to customize their own major. It offers students a measure of freedom from the traditional tracks.
These majors are typically drawn from three or more liberal arts disciplines, which enables students to integrate otherwise disparate interests into a single course of study.
‘The program allows students to find a major that speaks to what they want to learn,’ said Jill Seymour, a Harpur academic advisor. ‘This ultimately gives students the benefit of owning their degree.’
Kevin Josephs, a junior majoring in ‘the creation and the deconstruction of the self,’ said that his major evolved from a combination of psychology and sociology.
‘I wanted to focus on how individuals are changed by their environments and their identities,’ Josephs said. ‘No major here really focused on this specifically so I decided to go through the process and make my own.’ Josephs is taking an English class, a cinema class and an art history class, which he says has allowed him to learn in new ways that he might not have been able to if he had just taken three sociology courses.
In order to establish an individualized major, students must fill out a preliminary proposal application and submit it to the Harpur Academic Advising office. The students then meet with an IMP coordinator who helps in the initial steps of designing a curriculum.
From there, students choose a faculty adviser who will serve as a mentor and help with the major proposal. The proposal is then passed on to the IMP committee for review, and the students must present their major before the committee. Once approved, the students can declare their major.
‘It’s a long process, but it’s definitely worth it,’ said Gabrielle Korey, founder of the ethnomusicology major. ‘This program gave me the opportunity to pursue my interest in music from other areas of the world and how it is embedded in different religions and cultures.’
Josephs said that the program creates an opportunity to study the connections between disciplines.
‘This is a program that allows for creativity in thought and is probably the best way for people who haven’t been able to find a pre-existing path that excites them to create one that they can be fully satisfied with,’ he said.
Other majors created under the program have included ‘art cognition and evolution,’ ‘health journalism,’ ‘sustainable built environment’ and ‘humane education.’