NIU now offers two new majors in environmental studies and community leadership and civic engagement.

Both majors are geared toward individuals who strive to make a difference in the world around them, according to an NIU Today article.

“The community leadership and civic engagement major prepares students for public service,” said Judith Hermanson, director of the Interdisciplinary Center for NGO Leadership and Development. “We’re aiming to develop a set of skills [that will] benefit society as a whole.”

Hermanson said the major is for people who have passion for a particular cause and want to make a difference in a different way.

Students will choose to emphasize in one of five categories for the community leadership and civic engagement major: advocacy, enterprise, the environment, global engagement, or the arts and humanities. Students in this major will also have several hands-on learning opportunities and will take courses in areas such as in anthropology, economics, sociology and business.

Melissa Burlingame, program coordinator for the Institute for the Study of the Environment, Sustainability and Energy, said the environmental studies major is a “truly interdisciplinary major. Students in this major will take courses such as philosophy, history, politics, geology and geography,” Burlingame said.

Burlingame said students in the environmental studies major will be trained to be the translators; for example, students will learn to communicate between scientists, politicians and the community.

Christopher McCord, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said in the article that the two new majors “grew out of NIU strategic planning efforts and represent areas of study where there is high student interest and emerging employer needs.”