One of my advisees sat across from me as we discussed which courses she should take next semester. I asked her a simple question that took her by surprise: “Do you see a connection between your academic minor and your major?”
“I am not sure,” she replied. She thought for a moment and then hesitantly said: “I decided to declare a minor because I had room in my schedule and I thought, Why not?”
I regularly chat with students whose reasons for declaring a minor are decidedly vague. There was the student who bashfully admitted she’d heard a minor would look good on her résumé. Another student told me she was interested in taking more courses in another discipline and it simply made sense to declare a minor. And a highly motivated student told me that she had declared a minor because she loved the discipline in question but knew it would be difficult to find a “well paying job” if she majored in that field; a minor was the next best thing.
None of those students was able to describe a direct relationship between their academic major and minor. With each student, however, it took less than 15 minutes of conversation to demonstrate the connection between their dual fields — something each of them found revelatory.
Intrigued by the reaction, I gathered a small group of students and challenged them to make a connection between their academic majors and minors. With some prompting, they did. And afterward, almost without exception, they were more confident that pursuing a minor was not “just a waste of time.”
Higher education today often looks like a broken ladder — with its rungs floating in space, disconnected. There is only a hint that those rungs were once a part of a structure — a meaningful, well-planned, deliberate structure. Students approach their education piecemeal and focus their attention on the major and its requirements — saying things like, “I just need to get that course out of the way; it’s only a course.” The minor is just another disconnected rung.
But when thoughtfully constructed, an academic minor presents an ideal opportunity for students to put the ladder back together — to see the intertwined nature of various disciplines and the connections that make a college education dynamic, potent, and relevant to the happenings of our time.
Perhaps part of the problem is the word “minor.” It suggests something trivial and inconsequential. Instead, I propose that we view the academic minor as an “interdisciplinary link” and discuss with students regularly how it relates to their academic major. To demonstrate that the minor is anything but, consider trying the following simple activities with your students.
Raise the subject with your advisees. During advising sessions, invite students who have declared a minor (or two) in other disciplines to explore whether they see connections between them. You may have to prompt students initially, but it is best to let them come up with their own answers and to discover or “see” whether such connections exist.
You might ask, “How do you think a minor in writing will make you a better nurse?” Talk about how writing is a way of disciplining the mind, organizing thoughts, and expressing ideas in an effective way. A student who realizes that will start to see the seamless connections. A disciplined mind can respond to a variety of situations more effectively and confidently — perhaps in a medical emergency?
Try a group discussion of majors and minors. Watching a student struggle to spot the interdisciplinary links between her major and minor usually inspires other students to step in and help. “I guess there is no connection between art and anything else,” a student remarked with a sigh of puzzlement. Within minutes, other students had come to her rescue with ideas, associations, possibilities: “What about a minor in philosophy? Didn’t Aristotle consider art as one of the highest modes of gaining wisdom?”
You can either allow students to generate their own questions, or offer them a few examples to prime the pump: “Can you think of psychology without first having some understanding of the brain?”
In class, students often mention they are learning similar concepts or ideas in another course. Don’t waste the moment. Use it as a prompt for a quick major-minor discussion.
Bring up the subject with student clubs you advise. Clubs and association meetings are excellent opportunities to have a “major-minor” group discussion. Last spring, a student group I work with dedicated two meetings to this subject. I was most pleased to witness that during the second meeting a number of students from other groups joined us for a lively and thought-provoking dialogue.
To listen to students discover links between the majors and minors they are pursuing is inspiring, instructive, and even “healing” to us, their professors, who might have lost the ability to see the integration that makes a higher education possible. Sometimes we, too, need to see the interdisciplinary links.
I recently engaged in a major-minor discussion with some colleagues. “I had a minor in history when I was in college because I was interested in it; that is all,” said a professor. After a brief conversation, I was able to help him see that today he is a better scientist because of those “interesting” history courses that stimulated, engaged, and disciplined his mind. If we begin to more actively look for — and appreciate — the connections between our fields, our students are likely to see them, too.
In the words of the German poet Friedrich Schiller, “Freedom can occur only through education.” And education, among other things, is an integrated view of life — a ladder to a higher ground. As we climb, every rung should be fastened to a solid structure that supports our climb. Every rung should matter.
Micah Sadigh is professor and chair of psychology at Cedar Crest College.
