Out of the 70 majors the College of LAS provides to its undergraduate students, Shree Patel couldn’t find the one he wanted.

“There are so many ways you can study (neuroscience), and there’s actually a lot of neuroscience classes on this campus,” Patel said. “There’s just no neuroscience major.”

Patel, now a junior, eventually enrolled himself in the computational neuroscience curriculum of his dreams at the University.

He just had to create it first.

As a sophomore, Patel began to pursue an Individual Plan of Study, an alternative for students who are unable to find a major tailored to their unique interests or educational desires.

With the assistance of a faculty adviser, students within a major must plan and outline a set of courses that will fulfill a degree in the focus of their choice, one the University has not yet institutionalized.

While the IPS program is offered by the LAS department, students within the program often select interdisciplinary coursework that can span across various departments and even colleges.

Robert Steltman, executive assistant dean of the LAS department, considers the IPS program to be a thorough assessment of not only students’ personal motivation, but also their broad cognition.

“We want (IPS students) to be asking very detailed, critical questions, driven by a particular kind of thing that they’re trying to figure out,” Steltman said. “We really don’t want this to be a checklist.”

That being said, the LAS department is involved in these students’ endeavors as much as the students themselves.

Before they initiate their coursework, pending IPS students must propose their ideal curricula to a board of LAS faculty members, who then must approve the plan for the college to recognize it as a true major.

As a part of their presentation to the board, applicants must write a report explaining why they are interested in the subject of their desired major and how it is distinguished from the course material of pre-existing majors.

“When people hear ‘IPS,’ they think that means that you can do whatever you want,” Steltman said. “Not really. This is being vetted by a faculty committee, and we’re expecting it to look like a major.”

Once the board determines the proposed major is sufficiently detailed and original, the accepted student, typically a junior at the time of approval, may begin the specialized classes. From this point on, students rely on the guidance of their chosen adviser to make any additional academic decisions regarding their major, such as the removal or replacement of a course.

Austin Gephart, senior in LAS, believes the workload beyond the demanding approval process doesn’t get much lighter.

“The IPS program in general is not the easiest course of action,” Gephart said. “You’re going to have to prove to other people why you can make a major specific for yourself with hard classes.”

Patel, who’s interested in mapping out components of the brain, has integrated over 30 advanced credit hours into his plan of study, including many in psychology, molecular and cellular biology and computer science.

While this schedule may seem daunting, Patel is thrilled to explore the diverse course catalog at his fingertips.

“IPS has given me the opportunity to say, ‘Woah, that psychology course is awesome, I want to take that,’ and, ‘That agricultural biological engineering course is awesome, I want to take that,’” Patel said.

In addition to neuroscience, common focuses within the IPS program include entomology and Middle Eastern studies. A number of IPS tracks students frequently, seeking students such as gender and women studies and African-American studies and have inspired official majors within the University.

Despite the broad range of studies encompassed by the program, members of the LAS department have informally suggested each IPS major conclude with a capstone project, which would unite the several IPS pathways in structure.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be a paper, but it should be something that allows (students) to pull together or make sense of what they did,” Steltman said.

Though the University’s psychology major has recently introduced a focus in neuroscience, students interested in pre-medicine have been consistently drawn to the experimental IPS concept for their undergraduate research.

In Patel’s case, the IPS program has provided a harmonic experience in his academic career like no other.

“I was really looking for classes that I would genuinely be interested in and I would actually take things out of,” Patel said of his freshman year. “That’s why this individual plan of study fit me really well, because every course I’m taking is one I wanted to take.”

Gephart, who plans to continue his studies into medical school, affirms his IPS major has played a crucial step in carving out an education for himself.

“I think that the IPS is great in that (the IPS advisers) let you be different,” Gephat said. “What I always tell people is that if you’re really passionate about something that’s not offered on this campus, by all means, you should go out and pursue it.”

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