Senior perfects individualized major in public policy

Senior Luke Baldwin stands in front of a red brick building on the Cornell College campus, smiling.

January 2, 2024

Senior Luke Baldwin has been working for over a year to design exactly what he wants in a major to support his future career.

With the help of faculty members, he has developed an individualized major in public policy.

“I think there’s so much that can be done to try and improve people’s lives within public policy,” said Baldwin, a senior from Oak Forest, Illinois.

Baldwin started studying public policy during a Cornell Summer Research Institute project with Assistant Professor of American Politics Megan Goldberg. They examined public policy within school boards. He liked it so much that he decided to add it as a second major (his first major is politics), but Cornell doesn’t have it as a major. So, he set out to develop an individualized major.

“I wasn’t expecting to do this when I got to Cornell, but given the opportunity to develop a major, I was really appreciative of it,” Baldwin said.

Public policy can be defined as any system of laws or regulatory measures passed by a government or its representatives. Baldwin worked with three faculty members to create a course list for his individualized major by examining other colleges’ public policy majors.

This senior has now taken a well-rounded variety of classes.

“A big part of it was economics,” Baldwin said. “I took macroeconomics and microeconomics. There were also three classes within the statistics departments, along with some sociology and philosophy classes. We hit a lot of different areas.”

Cornell students wishing to declare an individualized major choose three faculty members to work with and construct a major consisting of at least nine courses. They need to file a contract with the Registrar’s Office by the middle of their third year at Cornell and complete the general education requirements for a B.A. degree.

Baldwin says this individualized major will help him in the future.

“I am planning on going to law school after Cornell, and one thing I’m interested in is the intersection between law and government, and a lot of that comes in legislation and policy. So having some sort of experience with public policy before I get to law school will be really useful,” Baldwin said.

Students have created individualized majors across several fields of study.

Here are some from last year’s graduating class: