Carnegie Mellon's Family Weekend on Oct. 12, kicked off BXA's special programming with an expanded alumni panel and workshops co-sponsored by the Career and Professional Development Center.
Friday, November 09, 2018
BXA Celebrates Silver Anniversary
Carnegie Mellon's Family Weekend on Oct. 12, kicked off BXA's special programming with an expanded alumni panel and workshops co-sponsored by the Career and Professional Development Center.
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The BXA program is a key feature that sets Carnegie Mellon apart from other colleges. I’ve often encountered individuals that have heard of this university in terms of computer science and engineering OR the arts. Yet I find it much less common for someone to understand how well the different schools within work together. I didn’t know much about the BXA program until I stepped foot on campus, but the more I learn, the more I appreciate it. The fact that the students are almost completing a double major seems especially difficult at a school so demanding. Also, the school of drama can often feel like a bubble, which is proven by the professors’ constantly urging for us to get out and see the what’s outside of it. Being a BXA major has the built-in quality of branching out of Purnell and exploring other subjects. The arts and sciences can be deemed vastly different, but they can complement each other quite nicely.
The BXA program at Carnegie Mellon is a great opportunity for students to be doing something non traditional at an otherwise pretty traditional university. In practice many aspects are different from the typical double major experience which I didn’t really realise before I came to school. It seems like a really great way to intersect artistic studies and academic studies. The article on the BXA program authough was not a clear representation of the program. It spent most of its time bragging about alumni which it's great that those people are doing so well in their chosen field but they seemed to focus more on those individual people then how the program itself has improved lives. I can see why, each person's BXA experience is unique to them but making a clear point to the article could have kept it more engaging rather than practically an annotated list of successful alum.
Since Carnegie Mellon's academics are so rigorous, it makes it really hard to double major, especially across schools. The BXA program essentially allows students the opportunity to merge two disciplines that they are interested in. I think that this program is important to the school because Carnegie Mellon is really good at many fields and emphasizes getting a holistic view of your subject area so this program takes that to the next level. I think that allowing students to branch out and learn more about different fields is important to letting people understand the world in their own ways. For me, I love both biology and theater and have seriously considered going BSA because I miss my biology classes and for a while considered being a pre med student. I also think that exploring the intersection of science and theater could be really interesting because it is something that is not often explored. Especially the intersection of biology and theater.
I do think that the BXA program is a very interesting way for students to combine their interests, but I often wonder what people outside of Carnegie Mellon would think about this program. Would they look down on an applicant searching for a job because they had a BSA or a BHA instead of a BFA? Regardless of that, I'm still happy that CMU has an option like this for people who's interests are that split. Sometimes I think that if I had known about BXA before I got to CMU I may have tried to go BXA with statistics, though I don't know if that would have been possible as I wasn't even able to get a minor in it due to conflicts with the SM/PM class schedule. However, for people who may have a may more flexible schedule this seems like a great option. I think one of the biggest roadblocks that BXA students face is having people understand what they do, and hopefully this celebration will help clear that up in a lot of ways.
I agree with Megan that I think BXA is a very specific to CMU thing and that people outside of CMU really don't understand it. Part of what makes it hard for other people to get is the fact that when you apply to CMU you apply to a college not the school as a whole so switching and combining majors is way more complicated here than in other places. I personally never really had any interest in BXA because I feel pretty good about doing one thing and the BXA students work so much. However, I can understand why CMU might not be the best for people who are not so focused on one thing and BXA allows them to explore. Megan is correct that I think socially at CMU and probably entering the job market BXA students have a hard time getting people to understand what they do before talking to them in person. Your first line of defense is your resume and if I don't get what those three letters after your name mean chances are I am not going to look at you any longer. Unfortunately that is just the truth of it all.
I came very close to applying to be in the BXA program when I first applied to CMU. In the end when I looked at the classes I’d be taken, I realized that I just wanted to focus on theatre rather than splitting my time, but I still think it is a really cool program, and I think having it is beneficial for everyone, whether they are in the program or not. Just the existence of BXA students means helps the spread of ideas since they will have exposure to a lot of classes than students with a major within a single department might not have. I think it also is nice to have that flexibility for students who find they are interested in a subject other than their major after they get to CMU, since it gives the flexibility to have a major in multiple subjects without needing to double major (which is not particularly compatible with all majors and is not a realistic option for everyone) or give either of their interests up. I didn’t realize the BXA program has been around for 25 years though, for some reason I thought it was a lot newer than that.
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