Melissa Engelking

Melissa Engelking came to Carthage to study biology, but like many undergraduate students, reconsidered her major after a few courses in a new field. She’s now majoring in Philosophy, with a second major in Great Ideas. She hopes to become a professor or a politician.

“After taking a few Philosophy courses, I found it to be extremely interesting, so I chose to change my major,” she says. “Philosophy really develops one’s own intellectual skills. You learn to think from various perspectives. One also learns how to ask questions and formulate arguments better.”

She says philosophy makes a great second major or minor, since it better prepares students for study in other subject areas, such as English, psychology, science, and political science. “It also helps one think of a variety of solutions — for everything from problems seen in the political spectrum, to why a certain character in a piece of literature is acting or speaking as they are,” to considering what an author wants his or her readers to think about his writings.

This J-Term, Melissa will travel to Rome for the study tour Shakespeare in Rome, taught by Seemee Ali, assistant professor of English and Great Ideas, and Michael McShane, assistant professor of Great Ideas and philosophy.

She enjoys the contact she has with faculty in other academic departments, she says. “Even though (the Philosophy Department) is a smaller department, it involves professors from various other departments,” she says. “Therefore students are able to study philosophy in different ways and in different perspectives.”