Abstract

Like others with many interests, I found picking a major in college a bit stressful. It was a relief to discover that Stanford, where I attended, had recently developed an interdisciplinary major called Human Biology, allowing me to study many things at once. "HumBio" had four main requirements: a year of coursework in biology, integrated with a year of social science core courses; a self-designed "area of concentration"; an internship; and a public policy course on either health or the environment. In the years since I graduated, options for areas of concentration have become more structured, but we had significant flexibility. My self-designed concentration was "A Feminist Approach to Public Health," something I...