Students in the College of Human Ecology's Department of Policy Analysis and Management (PAM) can now tailor their education to the career path that interests them.

Students can now choose 12 credits of upper-level classes from across the department's course offerings in health policy, family and social welfare policy, and consumer policy to form a curriculum that is best suited to their specific career path of interest. Students will be able to combine classes from different focus areas to create a customized education based on their interests. Until now, students could only choose their four upper-level courses from a single concentration area after their core curriculum requirements were fulfilled.

"Students felt constrained," said Rosemary Avery, professor and chair of PAM. "If they were interested in both health and consumer behavior, they had to pick one. "We're giving students the freedom to design career paths for themselves."

The PAM curriculum is designed to teach students how to make empirical research-informed decisions about public-policy issues.

The curriculum requires students to take a set of foundational disciplinary courses in economics, sociology, psychology and U.S. government. These courses are combined with a set of department-based core courses in policy analysis, microeconomics, economics of the public sector, basic statistics and multivariate statistics. As part of the changes made to the curriculum this year, the department has added a new required core course in demography to emphasize the impact of changing demographics on the policy environment.

The curriculum changes, which will be in effect this fall, were based on feedback that PAM faculty collected from course evaluations, said Darryl Scott, director of admissions for human ecology, as well as a survey of current and former PAM students about the curriculum.

"I hope it will lead to more thoughtful planning about what students really want to get out of our major," said Avery.

Sheri Hall is assistant communications director for the College of Human Ecology.