Learning Pathways
Students summit the undergraduate alps by majoring in a particular area of study. While this remains the gold standard for specializing in a subject, university-goers often elect to minor in a complementary or completely unrelated field, alongside their major, to enrich their academic experience. Beyond these formal trajectories, students normally enroll in a variety of courses to diversify their portfolio, or they concentrate their course selection within a specific area to condense their learnings, albeit informally, towards a singular discipline.
To facilitate the latter, we have compiled a thematic list of courses that span an assortment of emerging and innovative specialisms. These learning pathways, as we call them, include environment and sustainability, quantum technologies, machine learning and artificial intelligence, plants and agriculture, drug discovery and vaccines/human disease, robotics, and mathematical physics. There could be many more and we are open to suggestions.
We encourage students to look at these pathways and survey the courses they encompass. If they come across a theme that piques their interest, and they would like to develop expertise and forte in that area, they can pick and choose courses from that particular pathway.
Furthermore, in tailoring their course selection via these learning pathways, students can acquire depth in a specific field, connect with faculty working in that area, and polish their skill set to enhance their career and/or further education prospects. Although these concentrations would not be reflected formally on students’ degrees/transcripts, taking a focused group of courses will enable them to demonstrate competency and agility in a particular area, to potential employers, or on their grad school applications.
The School’s aim in curating this collection of courses is to elevate the undergraduate experience of its students and to further its mission of training the next generation of scientists who engage with 21st-century challenges and meet them head-on. At SBASSE, we are not just training biologists, chemists, physicists, or electrical engineers – we are also empowering our learners to become environmentalists, quantum technologists, plant specialists, therapeutists, and data scientists. We invite students to join us on this mission and build expertise in a chosen area by leveraging these learning pathways.
