STUDENT FEATURE: Custom paths to career success: YSU’s Individualized Curriculum Program empowers students to design their degrees

FEATURE STORY

Story by: Aicha Sawaneh, Communication major
Photography by: Omar Frazier, Multimedia Communication major

At Youngstown State University, students are designing their own paths to success through the Individualized Curriculum Program. Built for those who want to blend multiple disciplines into a custom degree, the ICP allows students to combine their passions with academic planning. For students like Aubree Peterson-Spanard and Tracey Barron, the ICP helped create unique majors that reflect their personal and professional goals.

Although Peterson-Spanard initially started at YSU as a Physics and Astronomy major, she realized midway through her sophomore year that the heavy physics load didn’t align with her true interests in science communication and cultural studies.

“By winter break of my sophomore year, I finally accepted that physics doesn’t like me and I don’t like it,” Peterson-Spanard joked. “I wanted to study astronomy, but I felt like the major had more physics than I was really interested in.”

Instead of transferring or switching to an unrelated field, she discovered the ICP. With mentorship from professors in each department, she built a custom general studies major that merged astronomy, anthropology and history — a program she calls “Archaeoastronomy and Museum Studies.”

Her new major allowed her to explore astronomy’s scientific and cultural significance while gaining experience in informal education. Through her roles at the Ward Beecher Planetarium and the STEM Professional Services Office, she developed skills in public outreach and science education, experiences that shaped her long-term career goals.

"I love sharing my passions with others, and I realized that informal education — working in museums or planetariums — was a real career path," she said.

The ICP offers students the flexibility to tailor their education while receiving guidance from faculty across multiple disciplines. Students design their academic paths to blend knowledge, skills and passion into a degree that is uniquely theirs.

Peterson-Spanard reflected on how the ICP gave her the freedom to think creatively and build a major meaningful to her desired career.

"This program allowed me to stay at YSU, find my niche and build a career I truly love," she said. "It’s not just about creating a major — it’s about creating a future."

Tracey Barron, a senior majoring in International Business through the ICP, also credits the program with helping her realign her goals. Originally focused on accounting, she discovered that the narrow scope of the field didn’t match her evolving interests. With guidance from her advisor, Emily Koch, she transitioned into the ICP to create a broader, globally focused major.

Through the program, she developed a curriculum that included marketing, law, accounting and global operations. She said the variety gave her a stronger foundation for international business — and a clearer sense of where she wanted to go.

She credits Peter Reday, former associate professor of Marketing in the Williamson College of Business Administration, for inspiring her to pursue global opportunities. His stories about living and working abroad showed her what a career in international business could truly look like.

Barron’s journey was anything but traditional. She worked full time in real estate while attending classes, raised her 4-year-old son and experienced major life changes — including the sale of the company she worked for — during her final year at YSU.

"Being a nontraditional student isn’t easy, but the faculty at YSU made it manageable," she said. "They were always there when I needed support. Nobody wants to see you fail here."

One of the most impactful moments of her academic career came through a YSU-facilitated internship at Phantom Fireworks during her sophomore year. After the internship, she was hired full-time and remained with the company for three years.

"It was fascinating to see how fireworks, which are made in China, are imported, go through customs and are distributed to retail locations across the country," she said. "It gave me a real look at supply chains, logistics and international regulations."

The internship helped Barron apply her coursework to real-world business functions, from freight operations and finance to distribution and compliance. She said the experience confirmed her desire to work in global commerce and helped her connect the dots between her academic studies and business practices.

Barron said her success at YSU is the result of both academic support and professional encouragement. From career days and networking events to responsive professors and program flexibility, she said YSU gave her room to grow.

"To put my experience in one sentence is impossible," she said. "But if I could offer advice, it would be this: Ask questions, learn everything you can and build relationships. At the end of the day, it’s not just what you know — it’s who you know."

Opportunities like this prove that education isn’t one-size-fits-all, but rather a canvas for innovation and a method for students looking to break the traditional academic mold to fit their needs. For students like Peterson-Spanard and Barron, the program didn’t just provide an academic path—it provided a platform for creativity, resilience and career readiness.

While both students pursued degrees through YSU’s Individualized Curriculum Program, their paths within the program looked very different. Peterson-Spanard created a fully customized plan of study by combining multiple academic interests into one interdisciplinary major, while Barron followed a structured ICP track already offered within her college. Their experiences reflect the flexibility of the program, which allows students to either design something entirely new or choose a specialized path that still meets their individual goals.

This is one of many ways YSU empowers students to take ownership of their education. Whether they are recent high school graduates or working adults returning to school, ICP students find support, mentorship and the flexibility to align their degree with their lives.