Northwestern’s Transportation Center has launched an interdisciplinary minor in transportation and logistics that focuses on the business and process of moving goods and people across the country and abroad.
Diana Marek, the Transportation Center’s assistant director for academic affairs, said the minor will prepare students for engineering, business or public policy jobs in transportation.
“Companies come here looking for students with those backgrounds, and up until now we’ve only had (students) at the graduate level,” Marek said. “Now we’ll be able to identify undergraduate students with that kind of experience.”
The minor will be available to students in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Medill School of Journalism, and McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The program comprises seven courses, including three core courses and a required three-quarter seminar. Students would receive one credit for the three quarters of the seminar, which meets weekly.
Students fulfill the remaining three credits with classes in economics, civil and industrial engineering, and other departments. Available courses include International Trade, Development of the Modern American City, and Transportation System Operations.
Marek said the Transportation Center planned the minor a year ago, but approval took one year.
“Most minors within the university reside in some particular school, like (Weinberg) or McCormick,” she said. “Because this was going to be interdiscplinary, we needed to get approval for the minor in the different schools.”
The Transportation Center has taught graduate students since 1954. Marek said the creation of an undergraduate program has long been in development.
“We’re not like a lot of junior colleges or even some of the public schools, which would have more career-oriented courses,” Marek said.
About three students have expressed interest in the minor, she said. Students who wish to declare the minor are told to contact Ami Trosley, academic and placement coordinator at the Transportation Center.
Marek said students who wish to graduate with the minor this June might be able to double-count classes or make other adjustments to fill the requirements by the end of the year.
The Transportation Center already offers six graduate programs through the center, McCormick and the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Marek said officials are excited to give undergraduate students the chance to study a subject that is increasing in importance in U.S. society.
“(Transportation) has a lot of attraction and it relates a lot to what’s going on in business and the community,” she said.
