New Minors in Global Business, Music Production, and GIS Approved for 2026-27
New minors pair with many popular majors at Washington College to provide career-ready skills that are in high demand.
As part of its continual upgrades to academic offerings, Washington College has added three new minors to start in the 2026-27 school year. Starting this fall, students will be able to declare minors in music production; geospatial information science; and global business, economics, and social impact. Spanning three widely differing fields, the minors reflect a common approach at the College to provide students with the opportunity to combine credentials in ways that connect their interests to practical skills in demand in the job market. As minors rather than majors or concentrations within majors, the new programs allow students in any area of study to add these skills to their knowledge, and resume.
“Developing new minors allows us to respond thoughtfully to emerging student interests while preserving the depth and rigor of our major programs,” Provost and Dean of the College Kiho Kim said. “By expanding opportunities for interdisciplinary exploration, we broaden students’ academic experiences and intentionally cultivate career-readiness skills that prepare graduates for complex professional and civic lives.”
Ken Schweitzer, associate chair of the music department, said that building a minor in music production has been the product of years of investment in teaching skills that the faculty heard students wanted to learn and that they knew would provide reliable employment prospects.
“We’re not job training so much as skills training,” Schweitzer said. “We are preparing them to be entrepreneurial.”
The minor will equip students with training that will serve them well in the evolving music industry, where live sound and many popular genres rely heavily on software such as GarageBand, FL Studio, Ableton Live, and Logic. Through the minor, students can earn academic credit in production skills and practical experience with the Washington College Open Studio space and its associated internships helping to produce music by students and professional musicians.
The minor in Geospatial Information Science (GIS) also provides an academic grounding in a technology that is becoming increasingly vital to a wide variety of fields, including environmental engineering, criminal justice, public health, and politics, among others.
"The GIS minor gives students a practical way to connect data with place—so they can map patterns, analyze spatial relationships, and communicate evidence-based insights about the issues they care about," said Tarek Rashed, director of the Washington College Geospatial Innovation Program where students can gain practical experience working on GIS projects contracted by government and other partners.
The final new minor approved to begin next year is the Global Business, Economics, and Social Impact. The multidisciplinary intersection of foreign languages and cultures, corporate social responsibility, marketing, international relations, and more all inform the landscape of business roles in today’s economy. In an era when localized expertise must meet global strategy, this curriculum prepares students to navigate the complexities of international trade, sustainable development, and cross-border communication.
The newly launched Warehime School of Business and its global business minor are organized around helping students bring all those skills together to forge a versatile professional identity. By grounding theoretical knowledge in practical application, the program is designed to launch their careers and allow them to make an impact in their chosen industries early.
“The new minor strengthens our curriculum by providing students with skills to analyze global markets with business and economic frameworks, communicate across cultures with confidence, and evaluate the ethical and social consequences of organizational decisions,” said Caddie Putnam Rankin, associate dean of the Warehime School. “It also opens the Warehime School of Business to students from every major across the College, giving them the opportunity to critically integrate global insight, interdisciplinary thinking, and applied experience as they prepare for their future careers.”
To view all minors available at Washington College and the career launching capabilities each offers, visit the Majors & Minors webpage.
— Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven