Declaring a Major

Declaring a major at Grinnell is an important milestone. While courses from a single department may only account for about one-third of your total courses, they often form an important foundation that you can build the rest of your education around. At this critical point in your career, the college and I ask you to evaluate your progress toward a liberal education and describe your goals for remaining semesters. Your first task will be to complete your four-year plan. I expect most plans to have meaningful engagement with the six Elements of a Liberal Education, as outlined in the college catalog. The college's major declaration form also asks you to provide a written rationale for your proposed course of study in the liberal arts. In your statement, I expect you to place your transcript and any unmet academic goals in the context of the elements of a liberal education. You should discuss your major field and/or career goals and how your four-year plan serves these. I cannot overemphasize the need to plan ahead. Deadlines approach quickly, and many other students will also be engaged in similar activities. Also note that the department chair's signature is required; you must leave time for scheduling a meeting with chair, perhaps allowing additional time for taking any feedback into account that may warrant further revisions. As a practical matter, we will work on your four-year plan first. Once we have agreed upon it, then you may begin to contextualize it in your written rationale.

Details: Four-Year Plan

As mentioned above, your first task will be to construct a complete four-year plan. Allot at least 2-3 hours for a combination of reflection, exploring the catalog, and using it to make sure you've gotten all the pre-requisites and semesters correct. You may even need to contact faculty members to determine when courses that are not offered every year may be offered next. While planning, you may also want to consider your eligibility for Phi Beta Kappa. You may find the requirements in the College catalog. This is an important exercise that can have real consequences for your satisfaction with your education. Make sure you give it adequate attention. After our initial meeting to establish our advising relationship (i.e., why do you want to major in CS? what's important for me to know to be a good adviser for you?), these are the next steps for getting your information into our advising system and proceeding toward the major declaration.

1. Log in to https://advising.weinman.cs.grinnell.edu with your Grinnell College username and Grinnell College (ITS) password
2. Click New Page (near the top)-note, make sure you do NOT CLICK NEW POST . Then choose Insert Template and select the Four-Year Plan template. Fill in your four-year plan semester-by-semester.
   • In the table, please list both course prefix and numbers as well as the title. (i.e., MAT-131 Calculus I)
   • For courses you plan to take in the future, please pay attention to what the catalog says about not only pre-requisites, but also in which semester the course is regularly scheduled. ("Fall and Spring" means both are fine in your plan; "Fall or Spring" is useless for you-consult the relevant department for likely offerings).
   • At the bottom, fill in and do the tabulations by division, listing only each course prefix and number (i.e., MAT-131) as well as the number of credits for the course, in the appropriate column:

     Humanities:

     ALS, ARB, ARH, ART, CHI, CLS, ENG, FRN, GRM, HUM, JPN, MUS, PHI, REL, RUS, SPN, THD

     Science:

     BCM, BIO, CHM, CSC, MAT, PHY, PSY, SCI, SLC, STA

     Social Studies:

     ANT, ECN, EDU, HIS, PHE, POL, RED, SOC, SST, WIL

     Non-Divisional:

     AMS, DGS, ENV, GDS, GWS, LAS, LIN, NRS, PCS, RES, SAM, SMS

     When you have all of them listed, please tally the total credits in each division/column.
3. When you're finished, click Publish on this (it only goes to me, no other members of the site), and I ll get an email to take a look. Make sure to leave the visibility setting as Private.
   Sometimes the email notifications fail, so it helps if you create a redundant system by also emailing me your URL when you re done and wish for me to review your plan.

I ll then leave comments about your four-year plan; you can add comments yourself and make changes or chat synchronously about them during my office hours. You should expect me to make suggestinos, proposals, or otherwise constructively challenge your plans in ways that will likely require you to make some revisions. If you're really not sure what you might want to take to round out your Grinnell career, leave blanks and put in the comments that you ll be coming to office hours. (Then do so ASAP.) Once we agree on your plan (but not before), you can proceed to the next step: the Written Rationale.

Details: Written Rationale

Your writing task here is a significant one involving a great degree of synthesis and brevity. Because this is a key milestone for planning your individual course of study, do not be surprised to receive constructive feedback that necessitates rewriting or revising your four year plan.

• Do not worry about the word count listed in the form; you can attach your roughly one page statement to the submitted paperwork if it does not fit.
• Most importantly, I expect you to summarize how your four-year plan engages each of the six elements of a liberal education.

As before, you can follow these steps:

1. Log in to https://advising.weinman.cs.grinnell.edu with your Grinnell College username and Grinnell College (ITS) password
2. Click New Page [not post],near the top and use it for your Written Rationale.
3. When you're finished, likewise click Publish. (Please also send me an email with your URL in case the notification fails).
   I will then post comments asking you to revise. You should plan to make at least one, and probably two revisions. (Writing is a process.)

When these are done, you will need to transfer them to your major declaration form, which I will then sign; you must also seek the department chair's signature as well. Because time is of the essence, you need not get the signatures in this order; simply make sure you relay to the department chair that I have approved your plan and that we simply are working to synchronize schedules to get a signature. Shortly hereafter, we will probably work on registration for the coming semester.