While the needs of most students are well served by existing majors offered on campus, some students have academic interests that do not fit well into existing programs or traditional disciplinary boundaries.  The Individualized Major Program (IMP) in the School of Arts and Letters meets the needs of such students.  It serves disciplined and self - motivated students who may wish to major in traditional disciplines or interdisciplinary areas for which majors are not available at IUS, as well as those who wish to fashion unique and original interdisciplinary majors that reflect their individual experience, interests, and needs.  These include students whose work and life experiences suggest the need for fresh ways of organizing existing courses into meaningful new majors, as well as innovative students who wish to bring together course work in several disciplines to focus on a specific area or make unusual yet valid connections between areas that are rarely studied together. The IMP can also serve transfer students who wish to continue work started elsewhere in areas in which IUS has faculty expertise but no organized majors. 

Unlike other majors, which prescribe a fixed area of study, the individualized major provides a structure that allows such students, in consultation with faculty members, to design their own majors on various topics and fields of study. Each major course of study varies in accordance with the needs and interests of individual students. Students work closely with faculty advisors, and all individualized majors are overseen and approved by a faculty committee that ensures each student - designed major has intellectual integrity and rigor.

Student Learning Goals

To be determined individually for each student/program.

Degree Program Admission Requirements

Students may not use the IMP program as a device for avoiding requirements of existing majors and concentrations, or when an existing major or concentration substantially meets the intended academic goals of the student.

Basics of the IMP admission and advising process include identification of an IMP advisor, an admissions interview with the Arts and Letters Coordinating Committee, curriculum planning with semester-by-semester review, a degree culmination project, a senior review dossier, and a senior review interview with the Arts and Letters Coordinating Committee.

Students generally apply for admission to the program as sophomores or juniors. Students should have taken at least 15 credit hours before proposing an IMP, and students should have taken fewer than half of the major courses of the proposed IMP before proposing it. A copy of the IMP Admission and Advising/Counseling Procedures can be obtained at the offices of the School of Arts and Letters, Knobview Hall 110, (812) 941-2343.