Prepare for more Central Hall photos in the social media feeds: Starting with the class of 2019, students now must declare their minors.
In the spring of 2015, Professor of Theatre George Angell brought the suggestion of requiring students to declare their minors to the Educational Policies Committee. He said it would ensure faculty members were aware of students pursuing further education in their field of study.
“We all want to be prepared to give students who minor the same focus and attention as we do the students who major,” Angell said via email. “To this end, we need to know who they are.”
College faculty approved the measure almost unanimously, said Professor of Chemistry and then-Dean of Faculty Mark Nussbaum. Any student may declare a minor, though current freshmen and beyond must do so by the end of their junior year.
“Members of faculty recognized that they had students pursuing minors, but they didn’t know who they were,” Registrar Douglas McArthur said. “It’s really a help because it gets students thinking proactively about what it is they’re doing, and it allows their teachers and faculty to better guide them to the completion of those things.”
Students declare a minor the same way they do a major. In the registrar’s office, they can pick up a minor declaration card. It asks for basic student information, name of the minor, and signature of the department chair. Advisers need not be notified. Students can declare three minors per card.
“It’s pretty simple,” McArthur said. “There’s no additional administrative burden on anyone, and it’s not a burden on students.”
Professors brought forth the change because they ran into problems not knowing that a student was pursuing a minor, which has caused some problems during class registration as students minoring in the subject requested to sign up for full classes and during senior meetings when students were missing classes and could not fulfill the minor’s requirements.
“It’s intended to make sure faculty and staff that are involved know that the student is taking this minor so that they can help make sure they’re taking the courses they need,” Nussbaum said.
Angell said knowing who is minoring will help in deciding what courses to offer, as well.
Department chairs keep a list of the students majoring in their subject, and the registrar has a database of what all the students have declared. Now, they will keep track of both majors and minors when students declare.
“Before, those students weren’t on the department chair’s radar,” McArthur said.
Nussbaum said students’ advisers aren’t always in the field of their minor, and they may not know all of the requirements for minors outside their interest.
“If students have to sign a card, the person who signs the card is going to be somebody in that field,” Nussbaum said. “They can help make sure they get the courses they need to get.”
Angell said that he expects more students to pursue minors in the future.
“We anticipate that as the core grows larger that more students will choose to minor rather than try to double major, as so many do now,” Angell said.
Separately, the faculty also voted that students entering the college during the fall of 2015 or after must earn at least a C- for a course to count toward their minor. Average GPA for minor-related courses must be 2.00 or higher, as well.
To earn a minor in the past, students wrote it down on their application for graduation, and McArthur would check their transcript to ensure they met all the requirements. Minors, however, typically are not required for graduation, McArthur said.
Both majors and minors will still appear on students’ official transcripts. Neither is printed on diplomas.
The college also included the new requirement in the 2015-2016 catalog along with the addition that students must declare their major by the end of their sixth semester at Hillsdale, a change that was also approved by faculty in the spring of 2015.
