From the time of our earliest remembering we have been asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” As small children, our answers ranged from the improbable to the outright impossible: an “astronaut fire man” because, “mommy, someone has to put out the fires in space!”; or a “ballerina rock star” because when you’re five there is no incongruity between being a ballerina by day and a rocker by night.

In time though, we grow wiser. And all too soon the pressure of college is upon us. It is time to settle onto a career path, to choose either our one great passion or the thing we have proven ourselves to be the most successful in, and follow it through to its reasonable end.

Not everyone, however, has discovered their one true passion by the time college applications arrive. And when it comes to areas of success, some folks have proven themselves to be highly capable in more than just one arena. For these individuals, the societal custom of heading off to college and selecting a single-focus major can cause an awfully uncomfortable itch of discontent.

Fortunately for students outside the traditional mold, Johnson State College offers the Interdisciplinary Studies Program—a four-year bachelor of arts major intended to allow students the freedom to design their own degree program.

Had a self-design major like this been available when Kathleen Brinegar, chair of the Education department at Johnson, been attending the University of Vermont she would have leapt at the chance. Instead she just kept adding programs on top of each other. “I ended up graduating with two majors and two minors because something like this didn’t exist where I went to school,” Brinegar says.

“I personally think [this major is] so important. I am a firm believer that knowledge does not exist in separate domains,” says Brinegar. “We don’t function that way, we don’t solve problems that way as human beings.”

While many schools do offer interdisciplinary degrees by the same or similar name, it is the student involvement in designing the program of study at Johnson that makes it unique. Working with an advisor, students develop a proposal that comprehensively describes the relationship and connection between three areas of study on which they have chosen to focus. This proposal is then submitted to the Interdisciplinary Studies Program Committee, which will either approve it or send it back for clarification and revision.

The proposal is comprised of two parts, the first of which is an essay. The essay discusses why a student wants this degree and why they believe it will further their personal and career goals. The most important part of the essay, however, is the discussion presented on how the three areas of study form one coherent whole.

“This is really the focus of the degree and what the people in the committee are looking for,” says Clyde Stats, assistant director of academic support services, as well as student advisor and committee member for the Interdisciplinary Studies program. “The committee wants students to think about it not just in terms of, ‘Well, if I want to do this as my career, then I need to study these three areas.’ They want to see really how you intrinsically connect those areas.”

The second piece of the proposal is the plan of study: the courses the student proposes to include as a part of their major. This plan can include classes already completed but deemed relevant. Each course in the plan will include a brief description of how it connects to other courses in that area of study and to the degree plan as a whole.

If this all sounds daunting, it isn’t meant to.

“It’s designed to be a process…It’s designed to help people think through what they want to do. So it’s natural that there’s some massaging of the ideas and the selections,” says Dave Cavanagh, chair of the interdisciplinary studies program. “That’s not intended to be daunting; it’s intended to be part of the learning.”

Beyond the submission of a proposal to a committee, the other feature of the Johnson program that sets it apart is the option for students to create a truly individualized degree. When selecting their areas of study, Johnson students are not required to choose from pre-defined disciplines.

“You might have an area of study called ‘cultural studies’ and you might have anthropology courses and humanity courses and history courses and psychology courses; it’s up to you to be creative in how you put those together. Or ‘aesthetics studies’ and you might have music and art and literature,” explains Julie Theoret, chair of the mathematics department, as well as student advisor and committee member for the Interdisciplinary Studies program. “It’s really up to the student to be as creative as possible.”

This individualized approach appealed to Allison Roberts, a senior with ambitions of working in campus ministry after graduation. “I have three main focuses and then picked classes out of there,” Roberts says. “My first one, and the main one, is psychology. The second one is race, ethnicity, class, and gender. The third one I kind of kept from my past major [health and exercise science], so that’s the body.”

Maia Struthers-Friedman, who was undeclared as a freshman and a psychology major as a sophomore, enthuses about the Interdisciplinary Studies major and her gratitude for it. She is now a senior and her program proposal was approved in the Fall of 2016.

“All of the classes I’ve picked are lending themselves to the parts of each study that I’m passionate about. I would say that I have more opportunities to discover how these connect in my majors,” says Struthers-Friedman who chose psychology, wellness and alternative medicine, and art as her areas of study. “That just felt so much like myself and I was so happy that I could do all three things.”

“Every semester’s classes all touch on the same subjects in really interesting ways and I’ll find parallels in my classes that really excite me,” Struthers-Friedman says. “I think that the major has leant itself to have the best kinds of conversations and types of classes I can have.”

Of course, not every major is a good fit for everyone and Interdisciplinary Studies is no different.

“This major is great if you’re a big picture thinker,” says Stats. “People who have a variety of interests and have very strong interests in a number of areas and don’t want to limit the bulk of their study to one area, this is an ideal major for that.”

“To me,” says Brinegar, “it’s looking for people who are open thinkers, who are making that decision they want to explore something outside of the box; that there isn’t a box. They don’t want to sit in any of the boxes that already exist.”