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Northwestern University

Interdisciplinary Foundational Discipline Courses

NOTE: Students who started taking classes at Northwestern in Spring 2023 or earlier should refer to the Distribution Requirements page. The information below pertains to students who start at Northwestern after Spring 2023.

A course that has substantial content from more than one foundational discipline may be listed in more than one foundational area.

Such interdisciplinary courses show up in CAESAR searches for each foundational discipline for which they are approved. 

rules for Interdisciplinary fD courses

  1. If you take a course approved in more than one foundational discipline, you can count it toward one and only one discipline. You can choose to count it toward any one area for which it has been approved.
  2. While you cannot double-count between foundational discipline areas, a course may be applied towards one foundational discipline and some other purpose such as major, overlay, or advanced expression requirement(s).

How will these courses APPEAR IN THE CAESAR DEGREE PROGRESS REPORT?

If you take a foundational discipline course approved in more than one area, it will automatically be placed in the first available slot in your Academic Requirements report on CAESAR. If you wish to move it to a different one of the approved disciplines, email the Registrar's Office Degree Auditors at RODA@northwestern.edu; your message should include your full name, 7-digit student ID number, the course number and title, the quarter the course was taken, and to which eligible discipline you would like the course to be applied.