While guiding students through pre-established pathways is the best way to guarantee them a balanced, solid degree that is completed on time, there are students for whom this plan does not work. Many students really want to have the freedom to explore multiple disciplines. This is because they are crafting their own major for later transfer purposes, they want to look at the intersections of and interrelations between disciplines, or they want to take a classical liberal arts approach to their education. These desires are not sufficiently served by our existing majors.
The directed interdisciplinary studies program would be for students whose goals cannot be met by our existing majors. Instead of providing minimal guidance and degree coherence for those students, this program would support students in making good choices that would encourage completion of a well-thought out program.
Procedure:
Prospective DIS students will meet with Mustang Success or a faculty advisor to establish their interest in the program.
After the consultation, students would fill out a DIS application, including a one-page essay explaining their ideas for their proposed program and their reasoning for wanting to adopt said program.
Mustang Success would communicate with relevant departments in order to find the most appropriate two advisors to co-advise the student. These advisors, along with a Mustang Success representative, would go over the application and decide whether or not to approve.
Once a student is approved, a primary advisor is designated; however, the student would be encouraged to check in with the secondary advisor each semester as well. The onus for doing this would be on the student, as with any other advising situation.
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