The Whittier Scholars Program offers students the unique opportunity to customize the focus of their studies and related research, working closely with professors and their peers.
Researching Hollywood's Industry
Tayler Scriber’s always been curious about people’s relationship with media: why they watch what they watch, and in turn, how that content affects them. Thanks to the Whittier Scholars Program, Scriber turned that passion into a self-designed major, Film and Humanities, and enjoyed exploring a subject that deeply interests to her.
She honed in on Black representation, both on the screen and behind the camera. In her junior year, she began by investigating how the revolutionary horror classic Night of the Living Dead characterized its Black lead and the significance of his role in a 1960s film. The optics of the seminal movie, of a Black man trying to survive conflict only to be killed by his protectors, resonate both in the '60s and modern day.
“I think it matters that we take stock of the things that we consume on a regular basis,” Taylor said. “We take these un-intentioned biases and we place that on people that we meet in the outside world. It is a reflection of who we are.”
Analyzing Night of the Living Dead prepared Taylor for her senior project: expanding her scope and investigating how Black women have been represented in film, and how those portrayals shape real women’s experiences. She also took a close look at Black women’s involvement in the industry.
“I’ve always been interested in how do we create a more holistic story of who we are,” she said. “Especially in the United States of America, where we have so many different types of people, it would behoove us to show different types of people and see how those stories effect who we are as a society.”
Applying Psychology to Sports
While she wasn't having an award-winning season on Whittier's softball team, Emily Adkison was working closely with her professors to blend her interests in sports and psychology into a single, unique major.
Sports Psychology was more than academic for her. Thanks to the self-designed coursework, she was grateful to have explored a deeply personal subject with real application to her life. Following an injury with a six-month recovery in high school, she would get nervous about diving head first during a game, working out with overhead equipment, or other potentially dangerous activities.
"With a sport like softball, I’ve been told my entire life that the game is 90 percent mental," she said. "Wouldn’t it be important to study how to be the best mentally at it?"
Examples of Self-Designed Majors
- Sports Psychology
- World Building
- Institutions and Social Justice
- Cultural Nutrition
- Critical Studies in Media Marketing
- East Asian Studies
- Spanish Culture in Sports
- Gender and Journalism
- Urban Community Studies
- Studies in Post-Conflict Reconciliation
