Change reverses policy in place for 15 years
Pictured: Cassie Hill, second student to declare a double major within the College of Business. PHOTO CREDIT: Hannah Charron | Staff Photographer
The University of Rhode Island’s College of Business is now allowing students to double major within the college for the first time since 2007.
According to Associate Dean Christy Ashley, the dean’s office prevented students from declaring a double business major primarily due to the significant overlap that existed between majors. However, recent changes in the college of business have opened up new opportunities for students to explore and widen their horizons.
The changes didn’t just begin with double majoring. The College of Business’s entire general education program has undergone changes with the goal of allowing students more freedom in a structured curriculum.
Prerequisites have been removed from certain courses, allowing students to take them as sophomores rather than juniors or seniors. The program has also expanded, adding new courses including Management Foundations (MGT201) and Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation (INE304G). According to Ashley, these changes expose students, even those who are not double majors, to new areas of the business curriculum by relaxing its rigid structure.
“We are focused on not only giving the students opportunities to interview for jobs, but helping them actually succeed once they’re in the jobs,” Ashley said.
The goal of this new curriculum is to encourage students to be more intentional in choosing their general education courses by choosing different “paths” in the program.
In the summer of 2021, significant changes were put into practice in the College of Business as a part of the regular curriculum review, which Ashley described as a “continuous improvement process.”
An important part of this process is peer review, where URI examines other accredited business schools across the country every five years to determine what it could do better. The changes that are currently being implemented in the college of business mark the end of the latest five-year cycle, meaning that collectively, these decisions have been in the works since around 2018.
During this round of peer review, URI found that many other business schools allow double business majors, potentially giving their students a leg up in the job market.
The college has established new courses and even new majors, such as the business analytics and intelligence major, to get rid of the overlap in curriculum. Even with the new curriculum, only one course may be double-counted for both majors and a triple business major would still not be feasible because of it.
Many students are still eager to take advantage of this new opportunity. In addition, the college is seeing increasing numbers of students entering with AP credits and taking classes during the J-term and summer term.
“People are able to accomplish more in three years and in four years than they were in the past,” Ashley said.
According to Ashley, students have been asking for years if they could double major.
“Some of our strongest students are already doing the work,” she said. “They just weren’t able to [declare] the double major.”
Cassie Hill, a third-year marketing and finance major with a public relations minor, was the second student at URI to declare a double business major. She is excited that she was able to fit in a second major before it was too late.
“I feel like it adds a lot more variety in what I can do in the future, and I feel a lot more safe going into the workforce,” she said.
Hill said that the decision to double major was immediate for her, as it was something she had always wanted to do.
“I get to do the creative side with marketing, but I also get to do the numbers side with finance, and I think it just opens up new opportunities for students to go into different fields and explore different topics,” she said.
All in all, the changes made to the business curriculum are intended to help URI achieve one goal: to better prepare its students for a competitive job market. Ashley said that the college hopes the new general education curriculum and the option to double major will allow students to make the most of their education by pursuing a wider range of interests and developing a more diverse skill set. These changes are still relatively new, but it seems that both students and faculty are looking forward to seeing where they will take URI’s College of Business and its graduates.