Hillsdale will now require students to declare their major no later than second semester junior year, beginning with incoming freshmen in Fall 2015.
Hillsdale faculty approved this change at an April 2 faculty meeting along with two other educational policy alterations: a rule requiring a minimum 2.00 GPA for a minor and a rule requiring students to use the same catalog, rather than three different catalogs, when fulfilling the requirements for their core curriculum, major, and minor. These various changes will not affect current students.
According to Dean of Faculty Mark Nussbaum, the rule requiring a major declaration before the end of junior year will hopefully allow departments to better assist students.
“Until a student declares a major, departments don’t necessarily know students are in that major,” Nussbaum said. “This makes it more difficult, in terms of advising, to make sure they’re getting the right courses in.”
He added that the rule requiring students to receive a 2.00 in their minor — at least a C- in each course — will prevent students from obtaining a minor without also obtaining some sort of basic proficiency in that field.
“We don’t want to have students who are just getting all D’s, or an average of a D, to say ‘Yeah, I have proficiency in this area,’ when in reality it’s nominal at best,” he said.
The third policy change will require that students’ major, minor, and core requirements all be completed according to the catalog in effect at the time of the students’ matriculation — in other words, the catalog which was in use when they started at Hillsdale. Currently, according to Nussbaum, some students have to juggle three different years’ catalogs while trying to fulfill requirements — one for the year they began at Hillsdale, one for the year they started their major, and one for the year they started their minor.
“Rather than have different catalogs, we’d like to be able to have one catalog be the reference point for the core and major and minor,” Nussbaum said. He added, however, that alteration of requirements on an individual basis due to special situations — such as a required class in a catalog no longer being offered — is certainly possible.
“If there are changes between the time they start and the time they declare their major or minor, it’s not unusual or out of the question that there could be a discussion with the department chairman or registrar about exceptions to this rule,” he said.
