Interdisciplinary minors energize learning and enhance job prospects
Students in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture and across the University have unparalleled opportunities to learn from and interact with distinguished faculty who rank among the most accomplished artists, designers, architects, performers, ethnographers, and scholars of our time. Our programs encourage interdisciplinary inquiry and creative production while upholding the highest standards of excellence and innovation within each discipline. Grounded in an understanding of the profound interdependence between creativity and academic research, our innovative and rigorous programs combine studio-based practice with critical studies and liberal arts scholarship—all within the context of a leading research university.
A growing list of interdisciplinary minors is attracting students who seek to boraden their post-graduation prospects and interact with peers in different areas of study.
"I'm clearly seeing how beneficial the entrepreneurship minor is to my future career prospects," said Veronica Chan, a fourth-year who is double-majoring in both architecture and design media arts. "But it is also sculpting me personally.
One of the most robust and constantly evolving interdisciplinary minors is disability studies, which has graduated more than 100 students. Victoria Marks, professor in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, became its chair in 2013.
As a choreographer, Marks said she never expected to work so deeply within the UCLA College, but she thinks that establishing and maintaining interdisciplinary coursework is both worthy and necessary.
“It allows for us as thinkers and doers to step outside conventional ideas about knowledge and to question what knowledge is and to create new definitions of knowledge,” she said. — Jessica Wolf, Mar. 7
Read the full article at the UCLA Newsroom website.