My So Called Major

  Illustration by JENNY YURSHANSKY/Daily Bruin

By Scott B. Wong

Daily Bruin Staff

Melanie Ho, a fourth-year student, is majoring in a subject the university probably has never seen the likes of before.

She calls it policy and media studies: a specialized major which examines how the messages in news and entertainment affect public opinion.

“I had tried out a lot of different majors – poli-sci, psychology, English,” she said. “None of them were really the right fit.”

“When I found out I could design a major, it seemed like a perfect way to combine my different interests in a focused manner,” she continued.

Individual majors allow students in the College of Letters & Science, who possess an interdisciplinary interest for which no existing major is adequate, to design their own – but it can be a trying process.

Students applying for an individual major must complete 36 units with at least a 3.4 GPA and find two tenured faculty sponsors.

“We don’t want to dilute the UCLA experience in terms of earning a degree,” said Toi Turner, counselor of College Honors Programs. “It’s not a short-cut in terms of getting around requirements.”

Because faculty sponsors – who approve the student’s proposal and senior thesis – are an extremely limited resource, the university could not accommodate every student pursuing an individual major, said G. Jennifer Wilson, assistant vice provost for honors.

Additionally, the GPA requirement helps control the number of students admitted, she said.

Finding faculty sponsorship can be difficult, Turner said.

“It’s a courtesy on the professor’s part to agree to be that student’s mentor,” she said. “It’s a big campus; folks are busy and tend to have full plates and to take on a mentorship role to this extent is a significant responsibility and commitment.”

Still, supportive advisors and faculty sponsors may ease the transition into the program.

“The old university curriculum cannot accommodate all of the courses of studies,” said Christopher Mott, an English professor and one of Ho’s advisors.

“The university needs to trust its students to believe they are capable of deciding, with guidance, on what is appropriate for them and their education,” he said.

Mott’s role is to ensure students fulfill their planned course of action by providing feedback, he said.

Ho’s curriculum consists of five lower division and 18 upper division classes, including those in political science, English and film.

“There’s always a variety, but I feel that my classes all come together because my topic is specialized,” she said.

Ho, who serves as president of Bruin Democrats, said her political activism also influenced how she arranged her curriculum.

“My understanding of political culture has definitely been influenced by practical political experience,” Ho said.

While Ho is an example of an individual majors success story, there are plenty more who inquire or apply to the program but never complete it.

Turner receives three to five inquiries about the program per week, while overall, only five to six students graduate with an individual major each academic year, she said.

“It’s almost, to some degree, a last resort opportunity, because with so many majors already accessible, with so many minors and specializations nowadays, students tend to find their niche,” Turner said.

Because Ho’s major is unique, she doesn’t have the leisure of discussing classes with students who share her curriculum.

“I don’t have peers I can talk to about my major requirements,” Ho said. “It’s not the same network of people all the time.”

But some students don’t even get to the hard work associated with completing the major.

Last year, Andi Gustavson, a third-year American literature and culture student pursued an individual major hoping to develop a theory of education to make literature come alive for children through performing arts.

“I wanted to catch children at a young age and get them excited about literature and reading through improvisation,” she said.

But Gustavson soon learned that Individual Majors is not a cross-college program.

“There are some theater performance classes solely based on auditions and you can only get in if you’re a theatre student,” she said.

“I went up the whole chain of command and hit the top,” Gustavson said. “They said they didn’t have room for non-theater majors and said they were trying to encourage a conservatory environment.”

Wilson said she understands why departments, like theater, restrict classes.

“The department is protecting very limited space for their students,” Wilson said. “They don’t want to open up the flood-gates to let everyone in.”

But as an educator, Wilson experienced what she called an “intellectual sadness” since the university cannot accommodate the needs of all students.

“It’s sad the way the university is structured because there are some students who want to take that engineering class or acting class, but can’t because they’re a Letters and Science student,” she said.

Still, if a subject garners enough interest from students, Wilson said she would look into developing the major.

“If we find students are constantly trying to do a major and that major is not around, for example, Armenian studies, we would speak to the Department of History about creating that major,” she said.

Turner said the individual majors program will remain a small one, catering to the needs of a handful of students, since Letters and Science already contains a variety of options.

“For those select few who still have some challenges in that area (Letters and Sciences), we have this path,’ she said.