Never irritate, Kyle!!  Never!!  I appreciate the questions to avoid those assumptions.

 

You are correct, while not written in ANY literature or policy manual, NDSU has never allowed students to major/minor in any program where the title of the major/minor is the same, or where departments have identified a specific restriction. Restrictions determined by the department have to be identified on the official curriculum just as your curricula have identified.   

 

State Board of Higher Ed requires that minors be a minimum of 16 credits, but NDSU has defined that a minimum of 8 credits for a minor be earned here at NDSU to meet a residency for a minor. Double counting is usually expected and “encouraged” because in most cases NDSU wants students to get the most bang for, not only their money, but to achieve multiple credentials, when possible, without duplication. (However, duplication would be earning a major/minor with the same title and we don’t want that.) However, there are some departments that do forbid double counting of credits and if they do, this must be spelled out on the official curriculum. The one example of this I can think of is in Psychology. They require a student to take PSYC 111 as part of their major so right in their curriculum they have indicated that students cannot use this class to also satisfy general education category B.

 

Here is where your programs get tricky.  Technically, your department only has two majors – music and music education. Your department has used subplans to give a “name” to your programs. I put the word names in quotes because technically, your programs are not stand-alone programs in state structure – it is one program with multiple subplans (Music = composition, instructional performance, piano performance, or vocal performance OR Music Education = instrumental or vocal). Students declare music or music education and then pick a subplan. The student is not actually completing a program call Music Composition, or Music Instrumental Performance, etc. I believe this was the chosen method, because a new program requires SBHE approval, whereas program subplans are managed at the campus level without state involvement.

 

Your minors (4) are stand-alone programs and they have their own specific names:

• Music
• Music Education
• Instrumental Music Education
• Vocal Music Education

 

I don’t know if any of this is helpful or useful, but if you have more questions or need to chat further, let me know. Here to unravel the mystery.

 

RaNelle