Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Read the June 2025 issue here.
Samantha Wood, MCAS ’25, recalls that when she applied to Boston College, she wasn’t “completely sold” on pursuing a management education. So she opted for the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, hoping to discover her passions through the undergraduate core curriculum.
Ryan Barcy, MCAS ’25, was double-majoring in music and biology with an eye toward medical school. But by the end of his junior year, he was questioning whether he’d be happy pursuing a career in either of those disciplines.
Emily Ahern, MCAS ’27, began Boston College as a philosophy student, aspiring to the study of law, before declaring herself as an English major. She’s still interested in the law, but now other opportunities are beckoning.
Ryan Barcy, MCAS '25
All three of them proceeded in the spirit of a liberal arts education, looking to learn broadly and stay open to different paths forward. And each one was able to reshape their studies and career prospects without having to leave behind the arts and sciences. They did so by taking on a minor at the Carroll School of Management, part of Boston College’s distinctive approach to integrating University schools and blending liberal arts with professional education.
“I do think that’s a very unique thing about BC,” says Wood, whose explorations led her to an economics major at Morrissey and a finance minor at the Carroll School. She noted that during her Summer 2024 internship at Piper Sandler, an investment banking firm, “the kids that studied business just studied business. But at BC, I think people aren’t as afraid to dip into things they’re interested in.”
That goes equally for Carroll School students: About half are graduating with an additional major or minor at Morrissey, and the management curriculum is now structured so that students overall are taking at least as many credits in the arts and sciences as in management disciplines. For Morrissey students like Wood, Barcy, and Ahern, the path to Fulton Hall was paved primarily by an expanded selection of minors created in recent years exclusively for students at other Boston College schools.
Samantha Wood, MCAS '25
More than 1,500 of those students are now enrolled in seven management minors—representing the largest expansion in the Carroll School’s history. The seven are: Accounting for CPAs; Accounting for Finance and Consulting; Finance; General Business; Management and Leadership; Managing for Social Impact and the Public Good; and Marketing. The requirements for fulfilling these minors are identical to those of Carroll School students in each discipline, and the students attend classes in Fulton together with their Carroll School counterparts.
Take finance, for example (by far the most popular minor at Boston College, with more than 650 students). The finance concentration at the Carroll School consists of six required courses, all of which must be taken by students enrolled in the minor.
"Same classes. Same professors. That’s what gives them the confidence to go out and apply for the internship or the job, and then, when they get the job, to move forward with the work,” says Carroll School undergraduate dean Ethan Sullivan, noting that few if any schools offer minors to non-management students that are so thoroughly integrated into the management curriculum or the functional areas of business.
On the ground, multidisciplinary life calls for some agility, especially if you’re toggling between subjects as palpably different as, say, physiology and fintech, or music theory and capital markets. Barcy, the biology and music major, explains that in the Fall 2024 semester, he would be immersed in music of the medieval era at one moment, and then suddenly in corporate finance class. “I was literally sitting in Burns Library, studying this 12th-century music book, flipping through the pages, which are made out of animal skin or something,” says Barcy, who minored in finance. “I leave this dusty room and go straight to corporate finance in Fulton. I had to switch to my business brain."
“I was expecting to be in a room with a bunch of stockbrokers and people yelling and stuff and just being super technical. But it was a really great integration process.”
Apart from that, Barcy says he had a smooth entry into Fulton. “I was expecting to be in a room with a bunch of stockbrokers and people yelling and stuff and just being super technical,” he says, conjuring up images of traders on the securities exchange floor. “But it was a really great integration process.” He says he was able to bring an arts and sciences perspective into management, and a management perspective into his Morrissey classes. One example running both ways had to do with the work of pharmaceutical companies, which surfaced in management and biology classroom discussions.
Indeed, part of the idea of the minors, aside from opening up the Carroll School to large influxes of liberal arts students, was to expose management students to the ways that, say, a theatre or history major may look at a problem. “That kind of cross-pollination has really made for a rich classroom experience,” Sullivan points out.
Barcy and many other minors began their management journeys through the Carroll School’s intensive, eight-week Summer Management Catalyst Program, which is geared exclusively to non-management students and involves three graded courses together with a career practicum. By design, Catalyst also prepares the way for a summer internship in the business world; Barcy’s was with a boutique investment bank in Los Angeles. The California native is now setting his sights on a career in investment banking, hopefully using his science and fine arts background to provide services to the healthcare and entertainment industries.
Emily Ahern, MCAS '27
Ahern, who added a marketing minor to her English major, says her combination of management and the humanities has led her to ponder a future role with a nonprofit, even as she keeps open the option of law school. “If you’re trying to end world hunger or do anything, you still need to raise awareness. You need marketing,” says Ahern, who is also a faith, peace, and justice minor at Morrissey.
For her part, Wood says Carroll School faculty members like her investment banking professor, Darren Kisgen, made her realize she could thrive in the financial world and connected her with alumni and others in the field. Upon graduation, she was heading back to Piper Sandler, where she had interned, to begin a full-time job as an analyst.
“I thought you had to be in the Carroll School to get a job in banking or consulting, but the minor gave me the confidence to go into the industry. And it gave me the skills I needed to be successful once I hit the desk,” says Wood, who also took Catalyst after her sophomore year. “Without that, I’d probably be doing something completely different now."
