Expand the Menu of Majors

For better or worse, one way that prospective students search for colleges is by looking for particular majors, and one way that prospective students' enthusiasms about higher education are excited is by imagining themselves majoring in various things.  In short, the list of majors (again, FBOW) functions a bit like the menu in the restaurant window.

It may well be that Mills does not optimally present the possibilities that prospective students would find here (in other words, students CAN do more than it looks like they can).  Our offerings in terms of majors are, for the most part, program- and department-bound.  We have been (wisely, we probably feel) rather conservative in this regard.  We have developed a few (e.g. intermedia arts, public policy), but we tend right away to think of these as programs/proto-departments that need to stand on their own.  Our experiments in expanding student options within the existing envelope of course offerings are fewer.

This proposal is for more consideration of moderately creative multi-disciplinary majors that put together courses from different areas.  They can be "housed" in a given department but draw on courses in multiple departments.  We have some models for this (there is an anthropology/sociology degree, for example, that uses parts of the sociology major but substitutes several anthropology courses).  This is arguably the very spirit of the liberal arts.

We rightly worry about falsely advertising things we can't really offer, but there might be attractive majors that we do have the courses for (or that we almost do and that a strategic supplementary hire would leverage).  This might be an opportunity to define new positions that can create multiple such leverages.  Strategically, this should be co-driven by what would really enhance the attractiveness of our repertoire of majors and what existing curricular resources are most exploitable via strategic investment.

SEE ALSO comment on other post

New Interdisciplinary Science Majors

Proposal 

Think about combo science majors that build on existing resources but which, potentially, attract wider array of students (that is, that go beyond just grabbing existing students from existing majors). What we really need is leverage, changes that have non-linear effects. What's going on in science at the best small schools? The story is not always just more variety of majors, but perhaps an exciting portfolio?

Examples 

• Biophysics. One might pretty cheaply develop a new major in Biophysics: because it draws on bio, chem, and physics, would just be one or two new courses. But if we add it, it is not to attract a bunch of new students who are not looking at Mills now. It might, though, make us look stronger in general (since a school with no physics program is a red flag to some students, legitimately). One might worry, though, about trying to do biophysics when we do not really do physics. 
• X/Engineering. We do get quite a few students interested in engineering, but even a degree in engineering science (like Smith, which as you know is not totally successful) would be really expensive and possibly not worth the investment. See also:Make the 2+3 Engineering Program Really Work.  
• Another option that has come up is a strand of Environmental Chemistry.

Another innovative approach in the sciences is the 5 year degree.  Rutgers, for example, has a Professional Science Masters (4+1) Program where you can earn a BS/MBS.  We would need to ascertain how are 4+1 programs viewed by employers and graduate programs, of course.  A variation on this might be to offer a five year BA/BS that expands options using current offerings but with, perhaps, an attractive discount for staying the extra year.