Colleges with unique majors

Parents Forum
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I am watching the CBS Sunday Morning segment on McPherson College’s 4 year degree in automotive restoration. Apparently it is quite impressive (Jay Leno offers scholarships to it!)

What unique majors (and at what schools ) are others aware of? Rice U, UNH, Trinity, Montclair State and UC Riverside offer a major in Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations. Arizona State has a degree in Biomimicry. UConn offers a Puppet art major. UC Davis has a degree in Viticulture and enology (wine growing/making/tasting). Several colleges offer cannabis study/growing degrees (I am paraphrasing the titles of the degrees). App State has a major in Fermentation sciences. What others are out there??

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NC State. Paper engineering.

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Bagpiping at Carnegie Mellon

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Purdue - Motorsports Engineering

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Cal Poly Humboldt offers majors in Cannabis Studies and Fire Sciences & Management.

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University of Akron - Polymer Engineering

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What is that?

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Packaging Engineering at Rutgers.

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I always thought that turf grass management was a “weird” major, but it’s offered at quite a few universities.

Glassblowing is another major I found “unique”, but is offered at a handful of universities.

University of Hartford, Endicott and Xavier University are the only universities with undergrad Montessori degrees.

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U of Washington (Seattle) has Scandinavian studies - includes Finnish, Icelandic

If anyone knows of a school that offers courses in Vexillology (study of flags) do tell, my kid is obsessed.

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I was curious and looked this up on ABET, since I knew that CWRU also has a Polymer Science and Engineering major. Akron’s isn’t listed on ABET (maybe because it seems to be a very strong one and might be known on its own merits?). But it looks like both CWRU and University of Southern Mississippi have these majors listed on ABET. However, both of those are accredited under the Materials Engineering program criteria.

So this led me down a path of looking up unusual ABET program criteria that I hadn’t heard of. :nerd_face:

Such as…

  • Ceramic Engineering (offered at Alfred University, Missouri S&T)
  • Health Physics (offered at Clemson, CO State, UNLV, Oregon State)
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University of Maryland College Park has the only ABET accredited fire protection engineering major.

Hawaiian language, literature, culture, studies majors are mainly found at schools in Hawaii.

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I believe Missouri S&T is the only school to offer a BS (rather than an MS, minor or certificate) in pyrotechnic engineering.

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You can major in Bluegrass at Denison.

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I believe Auburn is still the only university in the US to offer a degree in wireless engineering.

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Some schools out there offer a major that specializes in applying principles of art (usually visual but can also sometimes be music) to computer technology. A sort of mix of art and comp sci, if you will. Many schools allow double majoring or major/minoring in the two, but very few do it in one degree

Applications are pretty broad but think interactive media, sound art, UX design, etc.

UCSD - Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UCLA - Design Media Arts
Georgia Tech - Computational Media
SMU - Creative Computing

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Hamilton offers geoarchaeology, which is rare, if not unique.

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The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands is definitely a unique program. Students design their own major and receive narrative evaluations rather than grades. Johnston Center for Integrative Studies

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Looking at College Navigator, these majors seem to be pretty rare:

  • Iranian Languages & Literature: U. of Maryland, West Point, & Washington U.

  • Celtic Languages, Literature, & Linguistics: Harvard, UC-Berkeley, and U. of Notre Dame

  • Filipino/Tagalog: U. of Hawaii

  • Polish: Harvard, U. of Illinois-Chicago, U. of Michigan, and U. of Pittsburgh

  • Uralic Languages, Literatures, & Linguistics: U. of Washington

Harvard appears to be the only college in College Navigator with the following majors:

  • Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian Languages & Literature
  • Hindi Language and Literature
  • Indonesian/Malay Languages and Literatures
  • Sanskrit and Classical Indian Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics
  • Thai Language and Literature
  • Turkish Language and Literature

Of course, a college may offer a major in Middle Eastern Languages or Central European Languages or something else that could include one of the specific languages mentioned here. But, thought this was interesting nonetheless.

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