How do I go about constructing an individually designed program?
You can enter the program with a pre-designed curriculum plan, or you can create one as you go. The key is to identify some core professional and personal/academic interests that will integrate each of your courses, independent studies, internship experiences, and writing projects. Because the Interdisciplinary Studies program does not offer certification or licensure, there is tremendous flexibility in the way that students can create an individually-designed program. Hundreds of previous students extol the freedom, autonomy, and interdisciplinary flexibility of the program.
What can I do with an Interdisciplinary Studies graduate degree?
The answer to this question depends on each student’s personal, professional, and academic goals. There is no standard response to this question but because UVM is dedicated to an educational mission focused on learning that makes a difference, many of our students are engaged in studies to enhance their ability to improve their communities as well as their professional lives.
Some professionals seek the degree for career advancement in their current positions or to learn strategies to engage social justice issues related to education and other fields. Other students seek a graduate degree mainly for the intrinsic benefits of lifelong learning and the intellectual stimulation of graduate school seminars, writing projects, collegial relationships, and the pursuit of new knowledge and professional practice. Some pursue the degree to identify a future doctoral course of study, and others put together a broadly conceived, interdisciplinary course of study as an exploratory adventure to determine future career pathways.
What do our graduates think of the program?
Feedback through the years has been uniformly excellent. What every graduate highlights is the program’s overall flexibility, its interdisciplinary richness, the freedom of each student to put together an individualized program of study, and most of all, the program's continual encouragement and support to pursue individual academic, personal, and professional interests. The best promoters of the program are our deeply committed students and highly enthusiastic alumni.