Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences offers more than 40 majors, but some Northwestern students have a hard time finding one to fit their individual career and personal goals.

In the past, students have applied for ad hoc, or individually designed, majors in fields such as Jewish bioethics, cognitive neuroscience and international health studies. Applying for an individually designed major requires lengthy paperwork and planning effort, and students who take advantage of the opportunity are rare.

Music and Weinberg senior Nick Shultz designed his own criminalistics major after giving up on more established disciplines.

Shultz, who began college as a vocal performance major at New York University, transferred to NU his sophomore year after NYU would not let him double major in liberal arts and music. He entered the Music and Weinberg five-year degree program as a sophomore, keeping his vocal performance major but beginning in Weinberg undeclared.

After his first quarter, however, Shultz decided that Weinberg had no existing majors that would help him to achieve his goal of working in the investigation field, with an organization such as the FBI or CIA.

“We didn’t have a major for that, so I made my own,” he said.

Most applicants for ad hoc majors have defined career goals before they design their own major. Many students who create their own science majors, for example, go on to medical school.

Students interested in applying for ad hoc majors must go through several time-consuming introductory steps before their major application is considered. In Shultz’s case, the process began at the end of Fall Quarter of his sophomore year, but he was not able to declare his major until spring.

Weinberg Associate Dean Mark Sheldon said a student must demonstrate several facts before they can present his or her major to Weinberg’s Curriculum Review Committee. Sheldon said he has only advised a couple of students with individually designed majors, and knew of only one application currently being processed.

First, the student must determine with his adviser that there is no regular major available within the scope of the university. Weinberg puts a good deal of money and resources into existing majors and departments, Sheldon said, so ad hoc major applicants need to be sure that existing majors cannot in any way accommodate their needs.

After it is determined that the major does not exist at NU, the student must prove that his proposed major is academically meaningful, or “legitimately academic in character,” Sheldon said.

Shultz said in creating his own major, he had to meet with professors who knew the fields that interested him and receive confirmation that his major was “a good idea.”

Finally, the student must choose a faculty sponsor for his major and devise a curriculum. Faculty sponsors need to be experts in at least one of the fields encompassed by the proposed ad hoc major, and the proposed curriculum must be strong enough to withstand the departure of one university professor, as well as have an academic grounding. According to Sheldon, students must map out every course they have taken and will take until graduation, including distribution requirements and electives.

In Shultz’s case, he looked up the curricula of other schools that offered criminalistics majors and modeled his own classes upon academically accepted courses from other universities.

Interested students must also write involved proposals, which are then presented to the Curriculum Review Committee. The proposals work to prove the worth of the student’s proposed major, and often the committee will introduce changes before approval. Shultz was required to add an internship to his proposed program, since the committee wanted him to practically apply the information he was learning in his mix of chemistry, law and psychology classes.

Although few students know about the availability of ad hoc majors at NU, the practice is more popular at other top-ranked schools. At NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, all students create their own courses of study but share core liberal arts courses focusing on the history of ideas.

Shultz is set to graduate in 2009, and said he believes it was worth going through the lengthy process, since it shows future employers that he is determined about criminalistics.

“It does kind of set me apart, being the only student at NU with a criminalistics major … it shows my employer that I really want to be in this area,” he said.

But Sheldon was hesitant to suggest that ad hoc majors might serve as a type of pre-professional training, saying the idea went against the very idea of a liberal arts education, which graduates “a person who has learned to learn.”

Reach Liz Coffin-Karlin at [email protected].