American Studies at Wesleyan

morganhil
Wed, 08 Aug 2012 21:21:05 +0000

As a long-time recruiter, HR executive and now executive coach, I have never regarded a major that includes the word “studies” negatively. Typically students who have interdisciplinary majors are just as if not more academically motivated than your standard major, in part because a senior thesis or capstone project has often been required. I have found that such students can really energize a job interview when they get into a discussion about the projects that ignited their passion while in college. They stand out from others because their knowledge base is broader and they often demonstrate the ability to connect the dots and see patterns among seemingly unrelated concepts or activities. This is the stuff of which creativity is born.

Professor Slotkin, who Johnwesley references, was well known at Wesleyan as an inspiring and articulate teacher, and a gifted thinker.

One thing you should always expect from Wesleyan is innovative approaches to education that are not just different, but are also, and more importantly, rigorous and useful.

American Studies is a great major and if you look into the Wesleyan curriculum on its website you will be astounded by the depth and range of this program.

If your major at Wesleyan has the word “studies”, believe me, you will “study” quite hard. I say this as a proud graduate of the College of Social Studies, which propelled me rapidly into grad school in a discipline that was very unrelated to what I had studied at Wesleyan because Wesleyan taught me how to think quickly in patterns.

Maybe some American Studies majors can join in our conversation to give some recent examples.