Completing a minor offers you an organized way to pursue a secondary interest without taking on the burdens of a second major. Weinberg College offers minors in more than 40 departments and programs; each requires between six and nine courses. A complete list of majors and minors offered in the College is available online. (Most departments and programs in this list offer minors, but some offer only majors. Click on the department or program name in the list to get more information on their philosophies, resources, and major and minor options.)
Here are two important points related to minors:
- Weinberg College students are not required to complete a minor in order to graduate.
- Weinberg College students may not declare, nor have listed on the transcript, more than one minor.
Procedures Related to Minors
Rules Related to Minors
To declare a minor, follow the procedure for declaring a major, but fill out a Declaration of Minor form instead. Similarly a year before you plan to graduate, you must fill out a petition for your minor. Follow the procedure described under Petitioning to Graduate, but be sure to use the form for minors (officially called a Minor Application) instead of the form for majors. Your degree auditor in the Registrar's Office will appreciate it if you submit your major and minor petitions at the same time!
Since minors are optional, there are no fixed deadlines for declaring them. However, certain departments and programs might have guidelines or a timetable for fulfilling certain requirements for a minor. Declaring a minor a major can get you on department or program mailing lists, it lets you develop a relationship with a minor adviser, and it may give you priority for registering for some courses. So, declaring earlier rather than later is generally wise.
Listed below are some rules related to the completion of minors in Weinberg College.
- Only One Minor. Weinberg Students are not required to complete a minor at all, and they are not allowed to earn more than one minor.
- Grades in Minor Courses. You must earn a grade of at least C- in all courses you count toward your minor. No work passed with a grade of D or P may be used to fulfill a minor requirement.
What if you decide to do a minor in which you have already taken a course P/N and have earned a grade of P? You can petition for permission to count this course toward your minor. To do this, complete the petition for Permission to Apply a Course Taken for a Grade of "P" Toward Major/Related Requirements and submit it to the Weinberg Office of Undergraduate Studies and Advising. - Double Counting Minor Courses Toward the Distribution Requirements. You may double count a course toward your minor and toward the distribution requirements. For example, if you take Phil 150-Elementary Logic I, to fulfill your Formal Studies requirement and then go on to become a Philosophy minor, the course will count toward both sets of requirements. However, you will receive only one unit of credit for the course, not two.
- Double Counting Courses Toward a Minor and a Major. You may not double count a minor course toward your major, with two exceptions. First, the requirements for some majors include "related courses." Courses you count toward your minor may be used as related courses for your major. Second, nine interdisciplinary minors--African Studies, Art and Technology, Asian and Middle East Studies, Business Institutions, Gender Studies (formerly Women's Studies), Jewish Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Science in Human Culture, and Sound Design--have more liberal double-counting rules. At least five of the courses taken to fulfill the minor requirements in these programs must be freestanding, i.e., cannot also be counted to meet the requirements of your major(s).
- Modification of Minor Requirements for Individual Students. Occasionally, modifications are made in the minor requirements of individual students. For example, if you cannot take a required course for your minor due to scheduling constraints, but you have taken a closely related course at the same or higher level, the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) for your minor can give you permission to substitute the course that was taken for the required course. To do this, the DUS completes an official Substitution/Waiver form and submits it to the Registrar's Office. The standard requirements for each minor require the approval of the Weinberg College Curricular Review Committee, and department representatives are instructed to authorize waivers and substitutions only in very unusual situations.
