Cathy Miller, Campus Advising Lead
By Rebecca Lubin
“Just communicate! We’re friendly and want to help!”
NCC is a well-rounded community college with several majors. From criminal justice to accounting, to communications and nursing, the list is long. With all these options for majors, one question comes to mind, “What is the most popular major at NCC?”
According to Cathy Miller, the lead campus advisor, the most popular major is General Studies. She believes it is because it’s a flexible major where students could take up to 24 credits in open electives.
In a scenario where a transfer student sometimes wants to "customize their degree based on a program they’re looking at in another school, it gives them the flexibility that may be another program doesn't," Miller said.
Miller feels that students sometimes gravitate towards this major because they may not know what they want to do yet and general studies is a general major. “If you think about it, you’re filling out your application electronically and you have to put in a major and you look at the list of major codes and nothing jumps out at you because general studies jump out at you because it's general.” There are close to 2000 students at NCC with a general studies major. Miller says that every year at graduation it's by far the largest population of graduates with that major.
“If I'm meeting with a student and it’s their first semester and I see that they’re in general studies chances are I'm going to try and drive them into liberal arts,” Miller stated. Liberal arts is a little bit more rigged but in a good way, Miller explained, because it forces students to take the classes that they need to transfer to a four-year university. However, the general studies major does not necessarily give the structure a student needs. liberal arts does, and it also forces students to take a higher-level math class, lab science class, all the things you would need to transfer. Additionally, in most cases, liberal arts forces a language.
Miller thinks general studies becomes a default a lot of the time for a transfer student because of every other curriculum, even liberal arts. Students may have liberal arts electives but if they aren’t taking the right number of social science versus liberal arts versus humanities they can have unapplied courses.
“General studies give you 24 credits of open electives at the bottom which allows for a bit more flexibility, so when you get to your four-year school your credits will be applied with more flexibility,” said Miller. Every student is different and that's what makes the job of Pathway advisors so great because they get to help students figure everything out, discover options, and plan a path.
“A lot of our students want to transfer and a lot of the time we work with students to customize that general studies degree. So even though it's general studies in most cases we’re making it a transfer path for them we just have to be creative and work with students for that one-on-one plan”, Miller explained.
"We work with non-traditional students who have gone to many institutions over the course of a lifetime and general studies can be a way to make things work," she continued.
So in order to get an associate's degree to have a credential and help them advance in the world of work, Miller and the guidance office works with partner offices so, if a student is looking to advance, they get open electives for skill courses and connect them to the career center to take things to the next level if the student doesn't want to move on to a four year. However, Miller says that most general studies students are looking to transfer so she works to connect with the four-year schools and help make the transfer process seamless.
Rebecca Lubin is a writer for The Voice.