Graduate Program - Courses & Requirements

Declaring a Minor

Declaring a minor is not required for graduate students but they are available for those who are interested.

When declaring a minor the student must receive approval from and meet the minimum requirements established by the program offering the minor. The student must have a minor representative on his/her POS committee. The minor representative and the major professor cannot be the same person.

The minor subject area must be tested during final oral examinations, be approved by the POS committee, listed on examination reports and recorded on the Application for Graduation form in order to be placed on the student's transcript.

In addition to all of the graduate majors available at Iowa State (see Graduate Student Handbook for a list of majors) that can also be declared as minors, refer to the list below for other minor options.

List of Possible Minors

Agricultural Systems Technology
Gerontology
Philosophy
French
German
Housing
Latin
Linguistics
Russian
Spanish
Speech Communication
Technology and Social Change

Programs offering courses for minor credit only (not available as declared minors) include Accounting, Finance, Management, Marketing, Music and Transportation and Logistics.

Technology and Social Change Minor
Students who are interested in information technologies such as the Internet, World Wide Web, low orbit satellites, etc., as well as traditional mass media, and those who are interested in the use of technologies to bring about international or community development should consider obtaining a minor in Technology and Social Change. The graduate minor in TSC is a cross-disciplinary program that enables students to study the interactions between technologies and their users, on both societal and individual levels. The minor strengthens the ability of students to apply differing perspectives in understanding the effects of the global exchange of technologies and to heighten their sensitivity to the institutional and sociocultural issues attending the use of technology to improve people's lives.

Students choosing to minor in technology and social change should identify a TSC faculty member to serve on their program of study committee. This TSC faculty member must be from outside their area of study. With the agreement of the POS committee, the student declaring a minor in TSC will select a group of courses from the list of TSC-approved courses available through the program coordinator. For the master's degree, this group should be at least 9 credit hours. TSC 541 (SOC 541) is required of all minors. Students may not include in their minor any courses from their own major. All programs of study that include a TSC minor must be approved by the TSC program coordinator. The current coordinator is Eric Abbott.

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