With 35 choices of possible majors, it might seem as though there are plenty of options to choose from. But for certain students with a wide range of interests, confining their course of study primarily to one discipline may not be the best fit. The Krieger School of Arts and Sciences offers a handful of undergraduates a lesser known 36th option: Interdisciplinary Studies, otherwise known as "Create Your Own Major."
Michael Winnet, a junior, said that he averaged a 2.0 GPA as a chemical engineering major. The first semester after he created his own major, he made Dean's List.
"I hated engineering, so I never went to class aside from test days and the day they hand out the syllabus. I had no passion for what I was studying," he said.
Winnet took a year off after his sophomore year and reevaluated what he wanted to study. When he returned to Hopkins, he immediately switched into the Krieger School and began scouting classes that better suited his interests.
"I wanted to pick classes from everything - from all different departments, from philosophy, religion, anthropology," Winnet said.
Interdisciplinary Studies came up as a compromise between creative freedom and structure. According to Dean John Bader, the program creates a rigorous, defensive framework through which students can pursue an idea or theme in partnership with faculty member.
As an alternative to a more traditional major, it is appealing to students who find who their academic interests don't fit the requirements of a traditional major. While many undergraduates would jump at the chance to hand-pick their courses and dodge requirements, the process is rigorous - approximately half of all proposed majors get approved, according to Bader, making an average of three approved majors per year.
Bader said he introduced Interdisciplinary Studies to the Krieger School four years ago, after the Social and Behavioral Areas Studies major and the Humanities Areas Studies major were deemed unsuitable.
"[The Areas Studies majors] were interdisciplinary by structure but not by theme. They were kind of a mess. They asked for wide variety of random classes, and as we looked at them, we noticed they didn't hold together intellectually and that students didn't use them anyway. We thought, what's the point?" Bader said.
Bader said the Krieger School realized they had to replace the "catch-all majors" with another alternative, because students were still interested in creating their own academic paths.
When Winnet's academic advisor warned him that he'd soon have to declare a major, he floated the idea of creating his own. When his advisor was not supportive of the idea, Winnet brought his proposal to a favorite teacher, Professor Bhrigu Singh, who teaches a popular course called Sensuality and Religion in the Indo-European Imagination.
With support from Singh, Bader and a team of four faculty advisors, Winnet drafted his proposal, entitled "Consciousness of Thought." He researched the topic thoroughly, referencing an existing program with the same name offered at University of California at Santa Cruz, and drafted a central question: How do humans think, and what are the consequences of being a thinking animal?
The next several steps involved hand-picking four semesters of courses (from philosophy to psychology to anthropology), brainstorming a capstone project and presenting in front of deans and the Curriculum Committee at a hearing.
"At [the hearing], they're supposed to find the weaknesses in your proposal. But at that point, there were hardly any. I had already shown it to 10 professors, and I was confident about my presentation," Winnet said.
Winnet said that although the process was long and challenging, it was worth it in the end.
"If you feel there's nothing here than can be studied all in one field, and if you have the right blend of courses and a concise conceptual question that can be answered, you have to know there's going to be obstacles but it's well worth it to take that shot," he said.
Unlike Winnet, junior Sarah Feinmark did not have luck in pursuing her own major.
Feinmark said that she was attracted to Hopkins during the college search because of the Area Majors, which her parents had both chosen when they studied at Hopkins years ago.
When the program ceased to exist in her freshman year, Feinmark decided to propose her own major based on her interest in epidemiology.
"I wanted to study how different cultures view illness, such as the Black Plague, and I wanted to learn how the views have changed over the years. My ideal major would include history of medicine, public health and social sciences such as sociology and psychology," Feinmark said.
When she proposed the idea to Dean Bader, however, she was told that she should simply stick with the public health major.
"Even after explaining how no major would be sufficient, [Dean Bader] believed that it would be in my best interest to just follow the beaten path," Feinmark said.
She said that her experience discouraged her from trying to pursue her interests.
"We are getting undergraduate educations not to perfect a trade, but to learn as much as we can about all that we can. All of the majors I could choose leave me with too little time to explore outside of my major," Feinmark said.
Bader said that similarity to a pre-set major is one of the first things he looks for when reading over a proposal. In cases like Feinmark's, he said it is not worth all the effort if the end result is so similar to a major that is already offered at Hopkins.
"Intellectual coherence" is the next thing to look for in a proposal, according to Bader. "We're not looking for a random group of courses that you're hoping someone will swallow as a major," he said.
The next factors he looks at are rigor of courses, genuine curiosity and honest intellectual questions.
"One thing we didn't want to have happen was this to be some desperate senior who can't figure out how to get out of Hopkins because they kept failing key requirements for their major, so they create one. This is not designed as an escape clause. It's more legitimate than that," Bader said.
According to Mark Presnell, director of the career center, the rigor of this process will benefit students in the long run. He said that as long as the student has crafted a successful major suited to their interests, future employers should not have a problem with this alternative route.
"In the liberal arts, there aren't point-to-point, major-to-career maps anyway. As long as you can articulate to an employer what you want to do and why, and you provide a few lines of description on your resume about what goes into your major, that's what they're looking for," Presnell said.
According to Presnell, a self-made major could actually benefit a student in the job hunt.
"Sometimes it's a starting place in an interview, so it could definitely be a great, unique thing," he said.
Freshman Pierce Delahunt is just starting out on the path to create his own major. He said he has been warned of the challenges to come but that he's ready to combat them.
Delahunt said that although he didn't hear about Interdisciplinary Studies until he was enrolled at Hopkins, he always knew he'd want to do something "a little different."
"I always knew that I am a weird person and that I'd be interested in doing something that reflects more who I am than something that comes pre-packaged," he said.
Delahunt took a gap year in between high school and college during which he traveled and thought deeply about his interests.
"I tried to understand what fascinates me most about people or if it was different things. When I thought of the word 'perspective,' I thought, that's it. I want to study how people get information, what affects the way they see the world, and I want to study this through physics, psychology, Writing Seminars, philosophy, acting and art - all kinds of things," he said.
Delahunt said that he plans to propose his major next fall and that his vision of future education is one without any pre-set majors.
