The Individual Major Program continues St. Olaf’s long-standing commitment to providing opportunities for students to make meaningful connections among the various parts of their college careers, emphasizing the synergies between students’ academic studies and other experiences on campus and in other communities. Originally offered through the Paracollege and later through the Center for Integrative Studies, individual majors rely on and encourage student initiative. They also allow the college to be open to emerging areas of interdisciplinary and integrative studies. Students undertake curricular experiments that might give rise to the next generation of conversations, concentrations, or even interdisciplinary programs.
The Individual Major Program is a part of the Interdisciplinary and General Studies (IGS) Faculty, but, unlike other interdisciplinary programs, the Individual Major Program has no set curriculum or subject matter. Instead, its primary role is to provide administrative and pedagogical structure to students who choose to design individual majors.
Integrative Studies
In a sense, all learning is integrative, since all learning blends new experiences, information, and perspectives into a learner’s total understanding of their world. In some ways, this integration happens naturally over the course of four years of undergraduate study.
However, in the Individual Major Program, “integrative studies” refers to the intentional combination of diverse subject matters, resources, methodologies, approaches to learning, research and applied experiences. Students who develop individual majors are able to be both intentional and reflective about their learning –to plan how they will integrate their diverse educational experiences in pursuit of their educational goals and to be explicit about the connections they have made among those experiences.
Integrative study is an intellectual opportunity, drawing on the methodologies of different disciplines for study of a single subject, recognizing and articulating relationships and distinctions. Integrative study can also be experiential in nature, blending classroom learning with laboratories, studios, internships, and/or study abroad, and applying knowledge and understanding gained in one context to another. And, integrative study can potentially be a civic opportunity, building bridges between academic learning and the public conversations, using and contributing to connections among the college campus and business communities, schools, farms, government bodies, churches, arts programs, and other organizations.
The Individual Major
Any student in good academic standing may, after their first year, and with the support of program staff and a faculty advisor, develop and propose an individual, integrative major that satisfies their educational goals. The Individual Major Proposal must articulate a central, organizing idea that integrates a proposed sequence of courses, seminars, independent studies, internships, culminating an a Senior Project, Public Presentation, and Web Portfolio. Individual majors may not duplicate any existing program at the college.