At a ranger challenge for the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), Diraya Serrano-Geigel was drawing a meditating Buddha in her sketchbook when a cadre member commented on her art skills.
That unexpectedly led Diraya, custom-designed major (CSDN), biomed and ethics of medicine '24, to be selected to design several ROTC projects: a mural of a dragon flying over Center City buildings inside the Drexel Armory; the creation of a challenge coin — a token recognizing the actions of a military member; and, in her senior year, Diraya left her final strokes on the Drexel campus on the door to the Armory on Lancaster Walk.
"There is absolutely an overlap between my custom-designed major and painting murals”
"Troubled by family medical issues," says Diraya, "art became a way of alleviating frustration and grief." The CSDN student created her own major blending biomedical engineering, health sciences, and ethics to improve the patient experience in health care — which allowed her to focus her senior capstone on art therapy as an alternative form to pain medication. This fall, the passionate and vibrant graduate started her master's of divinity at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, aiming to work as a Buddhist chaplain in hospice.
"Painting murals," Diraya adds, led her to realize just how much of her custom-designed thinking she "applies to everyday life."
"There is absolutely an overlap between my custom-designed major and painting murals,” Diraya says. “I possess a diverse range of interests and can never just focus on one skill alone, which often allows me to approach challenges from multiple perspectives.”
Offered by Drexel's Pennoni Honors College, the Bachelor of Science in the Custom-Designed Major (CSDN) empowers students to pursue individualized courses of study not readily available through an existing major or combine existing majors and minors. This major is open to all undergraduate students and designed for highly motivated students whose interdisciplinary curiosity and career ambitions cannot be satisfied by a traditional major.
