Degree / Education

The Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies program at Arizona State University is set up to enable students to create an interdisciplinary education specific to each individual. When you decide to become a BIS student you must select two concentration areas that you feel will best represent a career you would like to pursue after college. The concentrations you choose then help to prepare you for a career in a world that is increasingly combining academic disciplines together. The BIS Program helps to teach you how to identify connections between your two concentrations and shows you how you will be able to use both in your career after college.

I choose to participate in the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies program because there were two areas of education that I was interested in, business and mass communications. Through the BIS program I was able to pursue both areas of interest and also learn how to integrate the two together. I choose business because this world is a business, and I feel that learning and understanding more about management, finance, and the economic world will defiantly help to benefit me in any career path that I choose to pursue. I choose mass communications because I have a strong interest in radio production, therefore studying communication in the form of the mass media would best help to educate me on the things I needed to learn most. I believe this program has put me ahead of the game because I have now studied two concentration areas, instead of just one.

The four core BIS courses are BIS 301, BIS 302, BIS 401, and BIS 401. BIS 301 helps introduce you to understanding exactly what the term interdisciplinary means. In this course you will learn important concepts and methods of interdisciplinary studies. You will then begin to look more closely at future styles of the business world. BIS 301 taught me how to better incorporate my two areas of interest into one and how I would be able to use them both in my career following college. It almost was like a reassurance course, because I felt going in like how am I going to be able to master two concentration areas in the same amount of time that you would usually master one. That is the beauty of BIS 301 because it teaches you how to think as an interdisciplinarian and not with one specific focus. BIS 302 then takes you more into the investigative side of interdisciplinary studies. It teaches you the strengths of using research as a way to solve interdisciplinary problems within your two areas of concentration. Overall it teaches you a lot about critical thinking and how you will better be able to solve problems in the work force, and ways to look at a problem from more than one angle. I learned a lot in BIS 302 because it taught me to think in ways that before I may not have ever thought to. My professor Dave Thomas had us complete a lengthy online personal survey that I will never forget because it helped to show me what type of personality I have, what kind of work environment I best work in, what kind of people I work best with, and then showed you how to communicate better with those personality types that you don’t always clique with. BIS 401 is an online course in which you are required to participate in an internship that incorporates both of your concentration areas throughout the semester. The online portion of the class then asks you to set goals for yourself while you are working at your internship site. It also requires you to write a few papers as to what you are learning and getting you more involved in finding out about the career paths of those who work at your internship site. Although I did not look forward to finding an internship for myself this has been the best experience that I have had while attending ASU. I participated in an intern program at Sports 620 KTAR, which is a local sports radio station in Phoenix, Arizona and this experience has given me a lot of insight as to what I want to do when I am through with college. I have met some great contacts and very helpful people that I will be able to network with when it comes time to find a career. Last but not least is BIS 402, each 402 class focuses on a different variety of topics depending on what your professor has an interest in. This course is labeled a senior seminar, because it provides you with an emphasis that is placed on examining and developing intercultural competencies that are essential in today’s diverse work environment. The 401 course that I participated in focused on integrating identities, we were asked to analyze at least one topic from multiple perspectives, and also to demonstrate the ability on how to integrate knowledge from our subject-area concentrations. I enjoyed BIS 402 because it challenged me to think in a way that I have never thought before. It made me look at topics in a different way than I would normally look at them and then challenged me to figure out why I was looking at certain topics one way all the time.

Concentration Area Summaries:

Within my concentration of business I was required to take five classes within the business degree. The five classes I chose were FIN 380: Personal Financial Management, REA 380: Real Estate Fundamentals, MGT 380 Management and Strategies, MKT 382: Advertising and Marketing Communication, and ECN 382: Managerial Economics.

FIN 380: Personal Financial Management is a course where I learned how to analyze personal financial planning. More specifically I learned the time value of money, stock and bond investments, and retirement planning. This course opened my eyes to the fact that the sooner you start planning for retirement the better.

REA 380: Real Estate Fundamentals specifies the different aspects of real estate. It taught me exactly how much planning and effort it takes to buy real estate and all the different contracts that must go along when purchasing real estate.

MGT 380 Management and Strategies teaches you what it takes to be a successful manager. This course was very interesting because it teaches you how managers think, and what they are looking for when hiring employees.

MKT 382: Advertising and Marketing Communication was another course that will be very helpful to me in the future because it shows you a different aspect of how consumers think when they are looking to buy a product. What catches the eyes of consumers the best and what makes people want to buy your product.

ECN 382: Managerial Economics Applies economic analysis to managerial decision making. It taught me why managers make certain decisions based on the economic structure of their company.

Within my concentration of mass communications I was required to take five classes within the mass communications degree. The five classes I chose were JMC 270: Public Relations Techniques, MCO 240: Media Issues in American Pop Culture, MCO 430: International Mass Communications, MCO 460: Race, Gender, and Media, MCO 494: Media and Politics, and MCO 494 Sports and Media

JMC 270: Public Relations Techniques, this course taught me all the different techniques that a public relations officer does to help protect their client. There are things you are, and are not allowed to say in the world of PR, and you are there to protect client at all costs.

MCO 240: Media Issues in American Pop Culture, this course tackled the many different media issues that take place today in American media. We took a look at why children act the way they do based on what they are exposed to in the media. Along with how artists use the media to express their feelings.

MCO 430: International Mass Communications taught me that there is more to the world of business than just here in the United States and that soon most companies in America will have offices over seas. This course taught me how we are going to need to expand our horizons in the near future to teach ourselves how to communicate with individuals in other countries.

MCO 460: Race, Gender, and Media taught me a lot about the world of stereotypes within the media. Why everyone in the world has a stereotype about most things, and what it is going to take to break these different stereotypes in the media within society.

MCO 494: Media and Politics discussed how the media twists different issues in politics and why you need to make sure you are not reading or watching false information. I learned that the media has a lot to do with the way politics are presented and what to believe and what to look out for when making those big voter decisions.

MCO 494 Sports and Media was one of my favorite classes, mainly because I have a huge passion for sports but also because I never realized how big of a part the media plays today in the sports world. I began to better understand the technique of how they get people to watch sports, by how they advertise and tease games.

Looking back I am very pleased to have chosen the two concentrations that I did. Business has taught me how most companies are run and how each and every decision made plays a huge role in the success of that company. Business has taught me how to look at a job through the eyes of a manger both when making decisions, and what important qualities to posses in the eyes of a manager when they are looking to hire employees. The business concentration has made me more responsible and aware of how and why I need to start planning for my future everyday. I feel that I have made smarter decisions when it comes to budgeting my finances, and not only thinking about the here and now which is what I had been doing previous to my business education. My second area of concentration is mass communications and this I know has helped me to see the bigger picture when it comes to how people communicate in the media. Before studying this area I had no idea how much time and analysis goes into why people market different products the way they do. It showed me how you need to look at the big picture and that you almost have to make people believe something that they don’t want to believe. Or make them interested in things they never thought they would even care about. I know this concentration is going to play a big role in my career when I need to figure out strategies of how I will be able to make people want to listen to sports radio everyday.

With the combination of these two concentration areas I feel that the sky is the limit, I know now that I now have the tools and the confidence to go into a work place and become successful. The experiences that I have encountered along the way and the education that I have gained will allow me to be a contender in any market that I am hired into.