Electives and Minors for Chemistry Students

By Glen Loppnow

Chemistry is known as the central science.  This is not a boast, just a recognition of the fact that chemistry connects in some way to all other sciences.  Therefore, one possibility for electives and minors is to take one of the other science courses. However, many chemistry programs include the other sciences in first-year, particularly math and physics.  Biology or biochemistry are very good complements to a first-year chemistry program. As are geology or oceanography. You may want to consider, though, taking something completely different, to exercise the other half of your brain.  Personally, I took psychology, music, and German language courses, and the contrast between the sciences and these courses worked well for me. 

Minors can work well with chemistry and may lead to non-traditional career alternatives.  For example, a minor in journalism can lead to a science journalism career. Or a minor in business can lead to chemical entrepreneurship or sales.  A minor in one of the other sciences can lead to an interdisciplinary research area, while a minor in education can lead to a teaching career. Do what you love to do and you can find your own way.

Electives and Minors for Computer Science Students

By Hamzeh Roumani

Whether it is online banking, playing a game on your Xbox, or displaying a photo album on your smartphone, a computer program needs to interact with people. Its input (keystrokes, mouse movements, or touch gestures) needs to be intuitive; its output (text, graphics, or animation) needs to be informative; and its logic (how it processes information) needs to be what people expect it to be. The underlying theme here is communication.

We, computer scientists, need to be able to listen to people as they describe a problem, and then design software that addresses this problem and interacts with users in a way that is most natural and effective for them. I, therefore, recommend electives (or a minor) that enhance your communication abilities, and three areas come to mind: business, digital media, and communication studies. Courses in business will make you familiar with the terminology of the corporate world and its priorities. This will go a long way toward enabling you to understand their needs. Digital media explores all aspects, technical and artistic, of human-computer interaction, while courses in communication studies provide theory and methodologies that underpin communication and media.

Electives and Minors for French Students

By Dana Paramskas

Second language studies work best if integrated with cultural studies related to the field. So for French Studies, good elective courses include:

• Latin (a good way to build up vocabulary, not only in French but in English)
• History courses related to Western European history
• Basic and more advanced linguistic courses dealing with historical and contrastive linguistics.

These subjects would also constitute a good complementary minor for an FS major: Latin/classical studies; western European history; French and/or Indo-European historical and contrastive linguistics, including contrastive linguistics French/English.

For minors, adding another language related to your initial second language is a good option, as for example French -> Spanish/Portuguese.  On the other hand, there are problems with related languages, such as interference in terms of vocabulary and grammar. The interference is not necessarily negative: it can be a sort of supplemental learning. 

But students might want to add a totally different language, from another language family: within the Indo-European group,  a combination of the Romance languages (French/Spanish/Italian/Portuguese/Romanian/Latin) plus something like Germanic (German, Dutch), Slavic (Russian and others), or, even further afield, the Arabic/Hebrew family or various groupings of Asian languages (Cantonese/Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu). 

Research shows that learning a third language not related to the first two is 1) easier 2) allows the student access to many mind-bending options and skills, since every language looks at reality in different ways, and displays reality in contrasting ways.