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We’re holding the second annual major declaration celebration.
The history of it is the software committee has been talking about it for awhile about how
to make the major declaration process more celebratory instead of making it feel like,
“I turn my blue form in to academic support, and now, I’m officially declared.” It didn’t
have much behind it at that point and time. So, we’ve been talking a lot about how to
make it more celebratory for a couple years, and last year was the first year that we turned
it into something. Give them a free gift when they come, there’s live music, there’s
students celebrating with them, other faculty members and staff members, other alumni
come back to help celebrate with them on the actual day. We also take photographs of
everyone who comes that day, and we turn them into composites for each department to
have for all the folks who declared for this year, the class of 2014 declared their major.
Then, we go through and give everyone name tags, and it’s kind of a fun process because
we print names in different colors, ribbons actually that go on the name tags in different
colors, and people get to find their department that associates them with a division within
the school. All the majors are color coded by Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural
Sciences, and Engineering. It actually all started with an idea that a student kept saying was,
“I wish when I declared my major, I got a sticker like I did when I voted.”
So, now, when students declare their major, they actually get a sticker that says,
“I declared my major today.”
“And your degree is?” “Chemical Engineering” “I’m a Financial Economics Major”
“I’m double majoring in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and English”
“My majors are International Relations and Japanese” “Microbiology Major”
So, up until last year, which was the first year that we held this event,
the percent of students in the sophomore class who declared a major by the end of the
sophomore year was historically between 43% and 46% pretty regularly for about ten
years. I always knew I was going to be a computer scientist.
I’m doing a double major in Psychology and Linguistics. I came in as an Environmental
Science major and decided to change last minute.
Last year, based on and largely due to this event, it increased to 58%, and then, by the
start of the fall semester, it was up to 70%.
I just declared a couple weeks ago actually. I declared it around a month ago.
Oh, I knew exactly what I wanted to do before I got here.
There’s like six different types of Biology specialties. What it came down to was picking
one from a hat. We don’t want to create additional anxiety for students who are still
undecided, and there are plenty of students who are. Sometimes a student starts off their
freshman year thinking one thing and then the sophomore year becomes a year of
exploration and discovery. That’s not always over by April 6th of the spring semester.
I think it’s fun getting everyone together and seeing all the other majors that you could
actually be or could have been. It’s really cool seeing a lot of other kids that I’ve met and
got through all these classes with to see what they’re doing. The professors definitely is
kind of awesome being able to talk to people. Seeing all my advisers and counselors and
stuff is really cool. And also, the picture frame… it’s pretty baller.
We knew we had done a good thing when we saw on facebook that someone changed
their status to a picture of them wearing their sticker with their tag line saying,
“I declared my major today.”