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Open-Enrolled Arts & Sciences Major

Drake introduces you to a world of knowledge. Take time to explore it all or identify your pre-professional goal first before selecting a major.

College of Arts & Sciences | On-Campus

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What You'll Learn

You don’t have to declare a major when you arrive at Drake University. In fact, in the College of Arts and Sciences, Open-Enrolled is commonly seen in the top five programs for entering students.

If you have a specific career goal but are unsure which career path is right for you, if you have multidisciplinary interests and desire coaching on how they fit together, or are a transfer student who has discovered the path you’re on isn’t a good fit, our College of Arts and Sciences’ Open-Enrolled program can be a great choice.

That’s because in Drake’s College of Arts and Sciences, “undecided” doesn’t mean undirected. As soon as you arrive on campus for Orientation, you’ll work with advisors and our Career Services office to connect with your values and interests and develop a personalized path through curricular and co-curricular opportunities toward your future.

After your first semester, you’ll have a better idea of what gets you excited and how those interests translate to the workforce. Then, you can start selecting classes more closely aligned with your emerging goals and building your network across campus.

Our process works: while you have until the beginning of your junior year to declare a major, 75% of Open-Enrolled students pick a program by the end of their first year.

About the Open-Enrolled Arts & Sciences Major

  • Enjoy every aspect of the Drake experience, including Honors classes and study abroad opportunities.
    Your advising team will encourage you to explore and connect you to faculty mentors in specific majors while also making sure you graduate on time.
  • Explore which classes excite you as you fulfill Areas of Inquiry (AOI) requirements, thanks to the flexibility of the Drake Curriculum.
  • Find your strengths and career goals through specialized advising, peer mentoring, networking events, and career exploration workshops through our dedicated Arts and Sciences Career Services liaison.
  • Be confident in your choice: work with Career Services and utilize their services to ensure your direction will lead to a job.

Program Facts

  • On campus
  • Open to full- and part-time students
  • Must declare major by start of third year
  • 120 total credits

Program Options

Open-Enrolled students can go anywhere the College of Arts and Sciences leads. Find your passion in topics as diverse as the arts, math and artificial intelligence, natural and social sciences, or any combination that you can dream of.

Open Enrollment Major

Engage your curiosity across the College of Arts and Sciences’ diverse breadth of offerings, including more than two dozen introductory courses in a range of topics and discipline-specific classes.

Meet the Faculty

Drake’s faculty are known not just for their academic expertise but also for their caring mentorship. As an Open-Enrolled student, you’ll interact with professors who contribute valuable insights to their respective fields—and who might inspire you to pursue a career you’ve yet to consider.

Adina Kilpatrick

Adina Kilpatrick

Associate Professor, Biophysics; Associate Dean, Biology

Amari Love, MS, T-LMHC

Amari Love, MS, T-LMHC

Therapist

Mindy Cathcart

Mindy Cathcart

Assistant Director of Student Affairs

All Faculty Members

Outside the Classroom

At Drake, learning isn’t just something that happens in class. From campus to the Des Moines community and the world, it’s an opportunity to connect with others, tap into their passions, and find your own through internships, problem-based experiential learning courses, and volunteer experiences.

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Advising

You’ll get two advisors: a dedicated advising specialist and an administrator in the College of Arts and Sciences. They’ll support you in turning your interests into an actionable plan that guides you toward your personal and professional interests at Drake.

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Mentorship

When somebody takes an interest in your future, your path becomes clearer. Our 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio makes mentor relationships possible—in fact, more than four out of five students say they’ve had one.

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Career Development

Work with Career Services and our dedicated A&S Career Services Liaison to picture and plan your future through job shadowing, counseling, and career assessment training.

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Networking

Drake A&S alums are everywhere (including nearly 20,000 in the Des Moines area alone). Connect with Bulldogs representing a range of organizations and industries through panel discussions and other opportunities to learn more about what they do.

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Study Abroad

From semester-long experiences at partner institutions to short, faculty-led trips to other countries during J-Term, studying abroad can give you an entirely new perspective on the career you want to pursue.

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Community-Engaged Learning

Empowering our community can light a spark that leads to a career. Drake students serve legal clinics, local schools, advocacy organizations, and other groups, doing work that enriches our communities and changes lives.

Careers & Skills

Regardless of the major you ultimately choose, all of our students build their academic foundation on the Drake Curriculum. It’s a wide-ranging course of study meant to foster curiosity—something you’ve already demonstrated as an Open-Enrolled student.

By the time you graduate, you’ll have taken classes in nine different Areas of Inquiry, encountering everything from values and ethics to engaged citizenship to quantitative and information literacy. We think learning these types of things makes you a better prospective employee; more importantly, we think they also make you a better citizen.

Opportunities

  • Business and entrepreneurship
  • Communications and media
  • Marketing
  • STEM and science-related fields
  • Education
  • Government and policy
  • Non-profit leadership
  • Graduate studies

Skills

  • Active self-discovery leads to confidence
  • Learn to navigate the university and your future chosen major, with guided mentorship and career resources
  • Strengthen your critical thinking, analytical, communication, and problem-solving skills
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“I think the nice thing about Drake is that you don’t have to have two years of required coursework before either you declare a major or are able to get into specific classes. I took a variety of classes my freshman year. My focus was to take courses that I thought would interest me and figure out what I wanted to do.”
Emmy Lustig, AS’13

Related Programs

As an Open-Enrolled student, you’ll guide your exploration through the College of Arts and Sciences before deciding on a major. From the fine arts to the humanities and social sciences, to the natural sciences, you’re bound only by your interests.

Biology, BA or BS

Study life in all its forms, from one-celled organisms to complex ecosystems, while preparing for careers in fields such as medicine, healthcare, and agriculture.

Law, Politics and Society, BA

Build a better understanding of how law influences our lives in one of the nation’s only undergraduate legal studies majors.

Women’s and Gender Studies, Concentration

Gender is ingrained in almost every aspect of our lives. Women’s and Gender Studies examines how gender shapes social roles, identities, and access to power.

Take the Next Step

A liberal arts education can take you almost anywhere. Drake’s Open-Enrolled program will get you started down a path that’s right for you.

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