Accelerated Program

Claremont Graduate University offers qualified undergraduate students at The Claremont Colleges the opportunity to work simultaneously toward the completion of their undergraduate degree requirements and a master’s degree in selected academic fields. Applicants must be recommended by their respective college faculty and should apply to the program during their junior year. Undergraduate students should consult their advisors and the University as early as possible to plan their academic a programs. The units accepted must be a B or better.

Click HERE for more information about the Accelerated Program, or contact Matt Hutter, SISAT recruiter, at 909.607.3180 or via email at matt.hutter@cgu.edu.

Joint B.A./M.S.I.S. Degree Program in
Organizational Studies and Information Systems and Technology

Pitzer College has an accelerated program arrangement with CGU's School of Information Systems and Technology for this particular program.

The faculties in Pitzer’s Organizational Studies Field Group and CGU’s School of Information Systems and Technology offer Organizational Studies concentrators at Pitzer the opportunity to obtain an accelerated Masters of Science in Information Systems degree. Students must formally apply and be admitted into the Information Science Program at CGU, usually in the spring of their junior year. Applicants must also be recommended by the Pitzer Organizational Studies Field Group. Students in the joint program must declare their concentration in Organizational Studies before applying for this program.

The joint program is a 19 course program that requires nine courses from the Organizational Studies concentration and ten from the Information Systems and Technology Masters Program. This joint degree is designed to be completed in two or three semesters beyond the B.A. degree, which could include a summer semester. The student must enroll at Claremont Graduate University for at least 8 classes. Applicants to this program must also demonstrate competency in one or more computer languages before entering the program.

The concentration will include a set of 4 courses, with at least one course from each of two broad areas: Technology/Tools and Management/Strategy. The concentrations generally fall within the field strengths of the core faculty. In addition, a student will be able to customize his or her own concentration. The customized concentration would allow students to select a set of courses that would meet their needs, but keeping the principle that at least one course must come from each of the two areas, and no more than 8 units could be taken (or transferred from) outside IS. In all cases, independent study classes can be used for concentration credits. Courses will apply to more than one concentration area (e.g., Internet Technology applies to both the electronic commerce and telecom concentrations). Additional courses offered by other Schools at the Claremont Colleges, courses transferred into the degree, or independent study courses could be used to earn concentration units.

The difference between this accelerated program and simply getting an MSIS after the normal completion of the undergraduate degree is that the student would enroll in three or four IS-related courses during their senior year, saving up to a semester or more off of a typical MSIS schedule. For the OS degree, the student would also use their IS courses for the depth component of their Organizational Studies concentration.

To better illustrate the course sequence, a typical semester-by-semester enrollment of a student in this program could look like this:

Year	Fall	Spring

First year	4 courses at Pitzer	4 courses at Pitzer

Second Year	ORST 100	2 OS Breadth courses
	3 other courses at Pitzer	1 Programming course
		1 other course at Pitzer

Third Year	2 OS Breadth courses	2 OS Core courses
	2 other courses at Pitzer	2 other courses at Pitzer

Fourth Year	IS 303	1 OS Core course
	1 OS Core Course	1 IS Core course
	2 other courses at Pitzer	1 IS Concentration course
		1 other course at Pitzer

Fifth Year	3 IS Core courses	IS 329 (capstone course)
	1 IS Concentration courses	2 IS Concentration courses

Accelerated Program with the Claremont Colleges