Worrying about finishing your degree is as much a part of the Simpson Experience as Campus Day or study abroad.

But the level of worry I hear from many students has been on the rise with the transition to the new Engaged Citizenship curriculum that will happen next fall at Simpson: Will the classes you need to graduate be dropped or your degree requirements change? Will you have to delay your graduation — potentially costing you thousands of dollars and months of your life?

The answer is simple: No.

Although Simpson can’t guarantee that every student’s transition to the new curriculum will be entirely complication-free, we can guarantee that all students will be able to work with academic advisers to make the transition as painless as possible.

Take my department, Communication and Media Studies, as an example. Like all departments at Simpson, we’ve adapted our majors during the past year to bring them as up to date as possible with the trends in our field.

We’ve also had to fit our programs of study within the college’s new general guideline that, effective Fall 2011, all majors consist of no more than 10 courses plus a capstone experience.

For our department, that process was eased by the fact that we realized more than two years ago that these changes were coming. When we created our current program of study in integrated marketing communication and multimedia journalism in 2009, we did most of the heavy lifting in fitting our program of study into the new ECC.

Most Simpson departments have now gone through that same process. And here’s where students must take responsibility to make their individual transitions:

Make an appointment — now — with your academic adviser to find out exactly how the transition to the Engaged Citizenship curriculum will affect your program of study. Each student’s transition will be unique.

But this is why you chose to attend Simpson: We pride ourselves on close student-adviser relationships and the faculty’s ability to individually counsel each of their advisees.

Simpson is committed to helping its students earn their bachelor’s degrees as soon as possible. We’re capable of considerable flexibility in helping students reach the finish line.

We’ll do our best to take the worry out of your transition — but you’ll need to work with us to make that happen.