Overview
Theresa Westbay, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences
Lisa Cunningham, Lafayette Eaton
Although most students choose a major within a single academic discipline and department, some students, particularly mature individuals looking for a more personalized major program, want the option of a concentration involving several academic fields.
St. John Fisher College has developed a program in Interdisciplinary Studies leading to a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts degree which fulfills this need while emphasizing the central and long-term benefits of the liberal arts and sciences in a society characterized primarily by accelerating change. One competence, among others, crucially needed to meet such change is the facility for synthesizing the disparate bits and pieces of knowledge which constitute the intellectual phenomena confronting the average person, and it is hoped that this program will encourage the demanding process of finding the connections and forging them into a meaningful world-view. This major, then, is for students who seek to organize an undergraduate program for their own personal and professional needs.
The program is designed to serve:
- Mature adults who no longer want or need a traditional major. This includes men and women who, in our mobile society, have accumulated some college credits in a number of fields but have found that their needs and their intellectual goals have changed in their search for fulfillment.
- Men and women, with or without prior college credit, at the midpoint of their careers who want and must have a baccalaureate degree but not necessarily a major in a traditional academic discipline.
- Students who have completed an associate’s degree and are looking for a chance to feel out their interests in an individually tailored program.
- The traditional college-age student who either has a specific interdisciplinary plan in mind for graduate studies or who seeks a general liberal studies education for its own sake.
Additional information may be obtained from the department directors and the Office of Academic Affairs.