This option is available within the Botany major at the following location:

• Corvallis
• Ecampus

The Customizable option is for students who have well-defined educational goals and career aspirations that do not fit easily within the existing options. The Customizable option allows students to have a transcript-visible program of upper-division courses that are tailored to their particular interests and professional objectives.

Option Code: 931

Upon successful completion of the program, students will meet the following learning outcomes:

• Communicate scientific concepts, experimental results and analytical arguments clearly and concisely verbally and in writing.
• Apply scientific methods, reasoning and appropriate mathematics to describe, explain and understand biological systems.
• Demonstrate understanding of five core concepts in biology: evolution; pathways and transformations of energy and matter; information flow, exchange, and storage; structure and function; and biological systems.
• Use interdisciplinary approaches (applying chemistry and quantitative skills) to work on biological problems.
• Describe the complex networks of interactions that determine energy flow and the cycling of water, carbon, nitrogen, and minerals within ecosystems.
• Identify and analyze the anatomical and morphological features of plants and plant structures as they enable plant function and reveal plant evolutionary histories. 
• Recognize and describe the features of vascular plant groups using standard botanical terminology. Interpret the evolutionary and phylogenetic relationships of plants by evaluating analytical and experimental tools used to understand organismal diversity. 
• Incorporate information from physiology, genetics, developmental biology, biochemistry and genomics to explain how plants integrate water-relations, mineral and organic nutrition, solute transport, respiration and photosynthesis, hormonal and environmental signals to regulate the processes of growth and reproduction.
• Describe and implement laboratory methods typically used in plant biology.

To create a customizable option, the student must do the following:

1. Define career goals and objectives.
2. Articulate a custom option title that briefly encompasses those professional goals (title is not transcripted).
3. Work with the botany advisor to create a program of courses for the option. The course program should meet all of these criteria:
   1. minimum of 21 credits, at least 15 being upper division
   2. all program courses must be taken for a grade (no S/U)
   3. courses may not double count with the BOT degree core requirements except for a WIC course or an “additional quantitative skills” course
   4. a maximum of 3 credits of experiential learning units may be applied
   5. up to 9 transfer credits may be applied with advisor approval
4. Plan how the courses will be scheduled, so that the option can be completed in a timely way. Remember that some courses are offered on an alternate year basis.
5. Write a one-page proposal that describes the career goals and outlines how each course in the program will relate to those goals.
6. Fill out a Customizable option form and submit it to your advisor along with your proposal. The advisor will review the plan and either approve it or make recommendations for revision.
7. When the plan is approved (signed), the course program needs to be submitted to MyDegrees. The Customizable option courses will appear below the Major Block under “student program of study”.
8. The Customizable option plan is locked, but can be modified if necessary, in consultation with your advisor.

Option Code: 931