At ESC, you design your own degree. The main idea is that you have a voice in what you study. Also, many students come to ESC with bits and pieces of degrees and prior learning – pieces that might not fit easily into a predetermined curriculum.

So, instead of choosing a degree and being handed a predetermined curriculum, you work with your faculty mentor to clarify your educational goals, decide on your own learning path, and create your own plan of study that matches your goals. You plan a degree program that is relevant to you while still addressing the knowledge and skills expected both academically and professionally in your chosen field.

Educational planning results in two main products, which are then sent to a college committee for academic review, feedback, and approval:

1. 1. a degree plan – a list of your past, present, and proposed courses and/or prior learning areas, which becomes your personalized curriculum for your degree
   2. a rationale essay explaining the research and reasoning behind your choices for your degree

The process of developing the degree, however, is as important (or even more important) than the final products. You will explore what you already know, what you need to know, where you want to go, and what it takes to get there.  ESC focuses on the process of educational planning for a number of reasons:

• Focusing on the planning process, as opposed to focusing on completing courses on a predetermined list, provides more flexibility for you to tailor your degree to your own interests and needs.
• On a very practical level, the lack of a predetermined curriculum provides the opportunity to liberally transfer in credit from other sources, as well as bring in credit through prior learning assessment, which advances you faster toward your degree.
• On a theoretical level, learning occurs most fully when the learner invests personally in the learning process.

Individualizing your degree plan still allows you to pursue a very traditional degree, if that’s your choice.  The degree you design might look like degrees that students pursue at other colleges, or it could be quite different. The most important concept is that your degree really becomes yours as much as possible, within the parameters of overall college requirements. There are college guidelines for degrees in different areas of study, and there are State University of New York General Education Requirements. Individualization means that different students address these educational expectations in different ways.  If you’re in a field that doesn’t allow for much variation (e.g., many accounting and business administration degrees don’t vary much from college to college around the country), you still have some choice of courses, and choice in how you meet expectations for your degree.  Your individualized planning may focus more on doing research and planning for your future learning or career. The point, though, is that you are making reasoned choices for your degree based on personal interests and goals.
When you plan your degree, you ask and answer these types of questions:

• What interests me as a learner?  What are my life and learning goals?
• What do I want to study academically?  What type of degree do I want to pursue?
• What are my professional goals?
• What have I already learned? Do I want to pursue credit through prior learning assessment?
• What does being college-educated mean? What do I think all people with college degrees should know?
• What skills and knowledge do I want/need to develop? What do I still need to learn?
• What are the important academic/professional concepts and issues in my field?
• What academic learning can carry over and help me in my workplace?