Nutrition Minor FAQ

The Nutrition minor complements many majors. The background and skills provided by the minor curriculum assist students in separating fact from fiction when faced with constantly changing nutrition research, information, and products. Students can access evidence-based information and be informed consumers themselves, while also applying these skills to their main area of study.

The minor:

• Provides a foundation in the applied science of nutrition that incorporates elements of basic and nutritional science, food systems, disease prevention, and public health policy.
• Provides core nutrition and food classes to complement basic science for students majoring in biology or chemistry or preparing for pre-health and other pre-professional disciplines.
• Provides coursework to students majoring in liberal arts degrees who are interested in this burgeoning field, but currently have limited exposure to nutritional sciences.
• Expands opportunities on campus for leadership on the role of nutrition, physical activity, and food systems to attain a critical mass of informed leaders to influence policy development and implementation.

Visit the Nutrition minor course requirements page for an overview. You may also contact the undergraduate adviser with any questions.

1. Complete at least 45 total credits.
2. Declare a major.
3. Meet with your major adviser to declare the minor. Only the adviser in your major department may sign the form to declare a minor; this is to ensure students meet satisfactory progress requirements.

Note: There is no deadline for declaring the minor, except that you cannot declare the minor after the deadline for applying to graduate. In other words, you cannot declare the minor after the third week of the quarter in which you intend to graduate.

1. Review the Nutrition minor requirements.
2. Meet with your major adviser to discuss your academic plan and declare the minor.
3. Contact advising with any questions and to make sure that all requirements are met. This includes emailing our advising team at the beginning of your final quarter to request that we certify your minor (confirm that at least 15 credits in the minor do not overlap with your major).

Probably. Basic human nutrition courses completed at other schools often transfer to complete the NUTR 200 requirement. Additional courses, after they have transferred to the UW, must be evaluated by advising. See the UW Equivalency Guide for information about how community college courses will transfer to UW and read the Office of Admissions’ transfer credit policies page for additional information.

If you believe that one of the courses you’ve taken is clearly related to the minor, you can submit our exception request form and we will review your submission and get back to you. Note that you’ll need to be logged into your @uw.edu account to access the form.

We often restrict some sections of our courses to declared Food Systems majors during Period 1 registration in order to give our majors, who need these courses to graduate, first priority. If the course has multiple discussion sections, it’s a good idea to check to see if other sections of the course are open to non-majors. If all open sections of the course are restricted to Food Systems majors, you can keep an eye on the course and try to register after the course opens to non-majors if there is space available, but you should register for another course as a backup in the meantime. You can also consult our tentative course schedule to determine when the course will next be offered.

In rare cases, an NUTR class may be coded as Food Systems majors only during all registration periods. If that is the case, then the course is only open to our majors, and students who are not declared Food Systems majors are not eligible to register.

NUTR 441 is offered through UW Professional and Continuing Education. Because of this, NUTR 441 is not covered by regular UW tuition and requires you to register and pay separately from other courses at UW.

University policy requires that a minor has a certain percentage of unique classes that are not being counted toward a different degree. This means that the Nutrition Minor needs to have 15 unique credit hours that are not counted toward the requirements for your major. For students majoring in Public Health-Global Health, avoiding issues with this requirement can be tricky, so it is important to meet with your major and minor advisers to assist you with schedule planning.

Because you cannot minor in your major and because of the extensive overlap between the Food Systems major requirements and Nutrition minor requirements, it is not possible for students to simultaneously major in Food Systems and minor in Nutrition.

Students who minor in nutrition come from a wide variety of majors, including anthropology, biology, business, public health, and sociology.

Yes! Per the Cross-Campus Registration page,

“A student may complete the requirements of a minor offered by another UW campus. Cross-campus minors are declared via the Change of Major/Minor form, submitted to the student’s home campus (not the campus offering the minor). Students should note that UW-B and UW-T minors, unlike Seattle-campus minors, may have admission requirements. Also, most or all the courses required by a minor will be available only at the campus offering the minor.”