MHC Vista: Build Your Own Major

SUMMER 1999 VOLUME 4 NUMBER 1
Build Your Own Major Taking The Lead: The Weissman Center For Leadership This Isn't Rocket Science...Oh Wait, Yes It Is! "Founding Feminists" Discuss "Does Feminism Have A Future?" Phair Play and More News Devil's Advocates and Other Enticing Course Titles Return to Vista Home Page

Erica Beck has lived mostly in suburbia, but is determined to succeed as a teacher in inner-city New York. "Having 'urban education' on my transcript allows me to claim a major that displays my passion in a way that a psychology and education major doesn't," she says.

Erica Beck takes a broad range of course experience into a job in the Springifeld, Mass., schools.

While talking with her adviser, Beck realized she could form a major from courses she'd taken out of personal interest. Among them were The Politics of Urban Studies, U.S. Latino/a Literature, and Differences in Learning. She also spent a semester in Kenya and volunteered in a third-grade Harlem classroom.

Teaching was always in the cards for Beck, but two Mount Holyoke courses--The Psychology of Racism; and Race, Class, and Gender in the Classroom--altered her focus. "Those courses opened my eyes to the inequalities in public edu cation," Beck says. "I have since decided to commit myself to teaching in an underresourced school."

Beck was enthusiastic after her first week of student-teaching in a Springfield school, despite its location in one of that city's toughest neighborhoods. "I've already bonded with the kids," she says, "I'm going to learn a lot from the experience." So will her students.

On air: Mia Howard's self-designed communcations major landed her a reporting job on an NBC affiliate.

Ever since middle school, Mia Howard had planned a college major in studio art. But the summer after her first year at MHC she was driving home from work when she heard a radio announcer ask, "Are you interested in communications?" Howard says, "I realized I was and at that same moment remembered MHC provided a self-designed major option. Everything fell into place."

The signs had been there, from Mia's interest in her father's advertising career to a CNN worker's suggestion that she do a TV internship. "I thought, how many more cinder blocks must fall on my head before I get the message?"

So she took Cultural Codes in Communication, The Social Impact of Mass Media, a video production class, and courses in film, journalism, sociology, and writing. Howard was arts editor for the student newspaper, worked in public affairs for MHC and Save the Children, and got the broad education a reporter needs.

Howard graduated in December and landed a full-time job with Springfield television station WWLP as a writer and reporter. In her first weeks behind the microphone, Howard interviewed both the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Gloria Steinem.

"I valued my major more and got more out of it intellectually because I could choose to study what I was interested in versus following a path based on what other people thought I should study," Howard says.

For Analisa Balares, it's a dual major today, help for her native Philippines tomorrow.

Most students have a major; Analisa Balares has a mission. She traveled from the Philippines to Canada and the United States for college, but is determined to improve life for people in her homeland someday. "I'd like to go back with capital to invest," Balares says. She's taken the first step toward financial independence by joining the prestigious High Technology Investment Banking Group of Goldman Sachs in New York.

But before the job came the major. "I needed to understand economics to solve problems in the Philippines, but I knew I couldn't be satisfied with just one major because I'm interested in so many things," she recalls. As an economics and mathematics major, she studied such topics as econometrics, differential equations, the economics of technological change, and economic development.

The self-designed major "made me much more marketable," says Balares, who had five job offers by the beginning of her senior year.

While pursuing investment banking, Balares is also laying the groundwork for two foundations she hopes to start back home. One would improve teaching and provide educational materials; the other would be a national mentoring organization for young people. Balares will make them happen.

Meet three more self-designed majors