Introduction to this quarter's edition by Megan McConnell, Editor
As an adviser at a four-year baccalaureate institution, I hear these questions a lot. And we've opted to give our lead story of this issue, ostensibly the "major" story of the quarter, to...minors. So I thought I might talk about them a little bit.
The UW added minors to the repertoire of academic options an undergraduate student might seek only about 25 years ago. One of the biggest reason our Faculty Council on Academic Standards approved them was so that students might seek a secondary area of specialization without necessarily adding time to graduation, the way a second major might end up doing (and please note that I said might, as not all double majors add time to graduation!). And they have done that...a minor is just the ticket for a student who discovers, pretty far along in her studies, a second field of interest and wants to delve a little more deeply into it. Say, for example, the geography major whose study of the distribution of resources throughout the world unearths an interest in health, who then decides mid-way through his junior year to add Global Health as a minor. Or the Spanish major whose love of studying the language morphs into a passion for the culture and history of Latin America, who decides to add the minor in Latin American Studies.
Conversely, it sometimes turns out that a minor is the major "left behind" when one's interests deviate from the expected path. I once knew a student, for example, who began as a pre-med student but ended up deciding health care wasn't for him. His love of science persisted, as did his desire to help people understand scientific concepts. His chosen major of journalism had no place in its major requirements to use the two years he already spent studying chemistry, but he opted to apply them toward a chemistry minor and had a rather interesting combination of a liberal arts major and a science minor.
Many of our interdisciplinary minors (Values in Society, say, or Disability Studies) work well for students whose primary major has been very much singular-disciplinary and want the intellectual exercise of looking at one theme or topic from various disciplines. I think of that kind of minor as helping a student think at a sort of "meta" level about the nature of intellectual discovery.
Those are a few good reasons why a student will pursue a minor. Too frequently I hear students asking about doing a minor because they think it will "look good" to someone, whether a graduate admissions committee or an employer. If you end up with elective credits, and most students will, it is absolutely recommended to be thoughtful about how you'll "spend" them, but another academic program (like a minor) isn't the only way a student can expand horizons, skills, knowledge, and "marketability." I always advise that students consider experiential education...conducting undergraduate research, doing an internship or two, studying abroad, or participating as a mentor or leader in something like the Dream Project, the Freshman Interest Group or Transfer Interest Group program, or Orientation. It's my belief that these activities are often more effective than a minor in terms of helping a student to decide what she might do with herself after graduation. Furthermore, they can be helpful in landing that job or getting that letter of recommendation for graduate school.
I hope you'll enjoy our "minor roundup" in this issue, and if you're thinking about other minors the UW might offer, you can check out an exhaustive list here: http://www.washington.edu/uaa/advising/majors/minoff.php
In addition to the article on minors, this issue of the Transfer eNewsletter brings you updates from Admissions, UW Bothell and UW Tacoma, the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. It's also got information on several scholarships for transfer students, as well as an amazing summer opportunity in the department of Environmental Health. Enjoy!
