How do IS students find their way to a big project?
First, they do a few years of college or university studies. Others arrive from the work world. Nobody comes straight in from high school because it pays to know your way around a university, and to know your skills and goals.
Students start with an interest or even passion, be it moral, intellectual or artistic. This is their subject. Then, gradually, they come to have a goal. This goal might be a question: what makes my subject tick? Or it might be esthetic: they want to create a work of beauty. Apart from creating, they also want to explain their creation. Many students' creation have a pragmatic or moral character to solve a problem or make the world a better place.
Then it's time to set up a meeting to discuss matters with the program coordinator Zulfikar Hirji via email at zhirji@yorku.ca. The conversation is wide-ranging, over tea or coffee and unrushed.
Sometimes, the student has met a professor who would make a great supervisor. But this is not always the case which leads the coordinator and the student to scout the entire university. When they find potential supervisors, the student contacts the professors.
Step 1:
Contact the Program Coordinator to discuss interests and degree requirements
Step 2:
Prepare research statement and list of courses
Step 3:
Second meeting with Program Coordinator
Step 4:
Submit final research statement and list of courses to Program for approval
Step 5:
If approved for the degree program, the Program Coordinator will apply for a program change and work with student to transfer to Individualized Studies
Step 6:
Work with Program Coordinator on course selection for years 2-4 and identification of thesis supervisor for year 4 Thesis Course
What for?
Because professors are well connected, it pays for students to consult many different professors. In speaking with one, another name might pop up, furnishing a whole web of knowledge, inquiry and production.
So students talk their way towards the project and the major. This business of scouting is in fact effective training in ingenuity, patience and ferocious persistence. Victory goes not to the swift, but to the stubborn and ingenious.
When it is at last over, the student has a suitable list of courses and has gathered enough information to compose their application. The process takes a few weeks; once it's done, the coordinator admits the students to IS.
So what is the big secret?
Act like the knight in chess: think in all directions, part out front, part-sideways, then jump.
Your move!