Majors at Centre

Centre offers real benefits when it comes to majors. In fact, your choices are virtually unlimited, giving you the versatility needed to succeed in today’s rapidly evolving work environment. In addition to our traditional major programs, we offer self-designed and double majors that allow you to customize your education to reflect your individual interests. Self-designed majors are one more way that Centre’s personal education sets you up for extraordinary success.

Double Majors
Since multiple majors make you more attractive to employers, you can increase your career options when you complete two majors in four years. About 30 percent of our students complete double majors. A few frequent combinations are French and international relations, English and drama, and math and computer science.

Self-Designed Majors
Although Centre offers many traditional majors, you have the opportunity to make your education uniquely yours by creating your own major program which could include faculty-approved, self-designed courses and independent study. A self-designed major isn’t meant to take the place of Centre’s liberal arts environment; it’s meant to enhance it. At Centre, we encourage you to be creative and support your individuality, while simultaneously giving you the strong liberal arts background that prepares you for the real world.

Senior, Shannon Mockler, for example, describes her experience majoring in European studies: politics, economics, and language.

I’ve known for quite a while that I had a passion for foreign languages, particularly Western European languages, but I knew I didn’t want to be a translator or language teacher. The international relations and economics majors appealed to me, but I knew it would be really hard to complete both of those without giving up my language study.

My self-designed major will ensure a timely graduation as well as give me freedom to pursue a unique course of study. A self-designed major allows the student to study more–not less. The idea of a self-designed major is not to let a student study half of an economics major and graduate, but instead to give students the ability to expand their course of study into multiple disciplines without the fear of postponing graduation.

Part of my self-designed major is study abroad. I am going to be studying in Trier, Germany with Georgetown University (DC) for a 7 week program in German language immersion. Centre is recognizing my credits from this program as German class credits and has been very encouraging to take this step to pursue my language interest beyond what Centre offers.

Here I have the freedom to be academically ambitious and pursue my true interests, instead of being limited by existing majors, abroad programs, and guidelines.

Other recent student-designed majors include communications and culture, religion and education, Japanese studies, education and the culture of learning, medieval studies, physics and metaphysics, religion and the performing arts, and public policy.

In a sense, you can major in anything at Centre, since our curriculum encourages self-designed majors. Although an interdisciplinary major requires special effort from the student, as with any of our programs, faculty members and administrators stand ready to help you at many points along the way.

The Centre Commitment
Students who meet the College's academic and social expectations are guaranteed an internship, study abroad, and graduation in four years–or the College will provide up to an additional year of study tuition-free.

For further information
For more information about majors at Centre or our other exciting academic programs,
contact the Admission Office at 1-800-423-6236 or e-mail: admission@centre.edu.

More at www.centre.edu/web/academic/majors