Major in Actuarial Science-B.S.

Indiana University Northwest offers a Bachelors of Science in Actuarial Science. Our graduates have recently obtained excellent starting positions in Chicago and Indiana. The field of Actuarial Science offers exciting executive careers for strong mathematics students. Opportunities include life, health, and casualty insurance, pension plan management, investment, and consulting. The actuary applies theories of probability and statistics and the principles of finance to the problems of insurance, pensions, social insurance, population studies, and related fields. An actuary plays many roles - researcher, planner, and decision maker. Actuaries must acquire some of the expertise of a lawyer, doctor, financier, accountant, and computer system analyst. they are involved in all phases of insurance operations, including management, marketing, investments, accounting, administration, and selection of risks. More specifically, an actuary might:

1.Design a new type of life insurance policy with benefits varying with the cost-of-living index;

2.Develop new applications for computers to supply needed management information;

3.Redesign a corporate pension plan to coordinate with recent Social Security changes;

4.Recommend changes to modernize benefits in health insurance policies and put a price on these changes.

As these examples indicate, the job is a varied one. At times the work is specific and mathematically precise and at other times as broad as the needs and complexities of modern-day society. By designing insurance and pension plans on a sound financial basis, an actuary can help alleviate the financial burden of untimely deaths and illnesses and provide people with more secure retirements. Actuaries are therefore sometimes called social mathematicians.

Students in our program study mathematics, including calculus, probability, statistics, theory of interest, and life contingencies. They also take several business and computer science courses. Students learn skills for problem solving and decision-making, and the program is excellent for anyone preparing to apply mathematics in a business environment.

Requirements:

1. 22 credit hours in mathematics: M215-M216, M301, M311, M360, M366

2. 10-12 credit hours in actuarial science: M320, M325, M485-M486

3. 7-8 credit hours in computer science: C201 and C307, or A201 and A302

4. 21 credit hours in economics and business administration: E103, E104, A201, A202, E270, F301, F420.

5. 18 credit hours of technical electives from the following courses in mathematics (M312, M315, M325, M409, M447-48), computer science (C203, C320, C343, C390, C201, C307, A201, A302), business administration (L201, N300, P301, M301, M303, A311, A312, A322, A325, A328, A424), and sociology S205.

6. 37-38 credit hours to satisfy distribution requirements in arts and sciences