Combining Skills and Credit Hours: The Pragmatic Approach to IS

This past week, two students came into my office, both of them in an educational pickle. (Two very different pickles.) Each had started on a track towards a major that turned out to be not sustainable. Now what?

Thirty years ago, if you went to a state college, had a work study job during the semesters and held down a full-time job in the summers, added on some reasonable support from your family, and abstained from dinners out, you could graduate in four years with a BA degree and hardly any debt.

Those days are over. The pressure is on: you have four years to get through, you take out massive loans, and at the end you better have something in your hand that counts - both in terms of actual career preparation (knowledge and skills) and signaling this preparation (the diploma).

You are pressured to choose a major and stick with it - by your parents, by your professors, and by society (all those times your parents' friends or your Aunt Ida asks you "what's your major?" - get your story straight!).

But what if you decide to change your mind? what if you started down the road of Biology and realize, two years in, that anatomy is not your thing? what if you dreamed of being a teacher since kindergarten, and then meet your first kindergarten class from the other side and say "Oh no! Ankle biters!"? what if you love dance, but injuries keep you off the stage? You have spent half your budget for your college education, and you feel stuck.

Enter Interdisciplinary Studies. We sit down together, look at your credit hour distribution in the fields you have already studied, and talk about your interests. Maybe you would be happy to combine your biology expertise with writing or drawing to work on informational material and text books? maybe you are excited to work with students one-on-one in a school setting? maybe you want to promote dance from behind the scenes? We find the courses that correspond to what you need to learn, and we work with professors who can help guide you.

This is what that can look like:

There are many careers that require organizational skills, business acumen, communication experience, and a deep understanding of how different fields come together in the real world. Often a combination of skills and knowledge from two or three different fields prepare a graduate better for a specific career than a single major might - and, since the courses in which you enroll actually often correspond very explicitly to your goals, much of what you continue to learn is directly applicable to your interests and ambitions.

Three students graduated from Coker this past spring with majors in Interdisciplinary Studies. They all had individual goals and ambitions, and we were able to create degree tracks that, although no less stringent than a single major, tapped into their potential to set them up for success.