Missing majors create an empty space at GCSU

Doctors. Nurses. Lawyers. Police officers. Teachers. Often students travel to college with colorful dreams of a career that they wanted since childhood. Still, many students fling themselves into a major chosen on a moment’s notice and often change majors, or even universities, through the course of their college education.

GCSU offers approximately 35 majors, a number that grew steadily with the university in the past few years. Facing budget cuts, though, the administration recently turned its focus away from expanding the majors offered at GCSU and focused instead on maintaining current majors.

“Three or four years ago, we started to expand the number of majors,” Dean of Arts and Sciences Kenneth Proctor said. “Then the (budget) crisis hits, and we can’t staff new majors.”

GCSU still managed to expand this fall by adding a physics major. The state Board of Regents approved the physics major, despite the economic crisis.

The school continues to grow and draw students to programs like nursing and education. Yet even with the continued improvement of the school, some students transfer out in search of other majors.

“I left GCSU because I was looking for a different, more specific major than the general political science offered at GCSU,” former GCSU student Caitlin McCourt said.

GCSU’s catalog of undergraduate majors is small compared to the catalogs of larger universities, such as the University of Georgia, which offers well over 100 undergraduate majors. But GCSU still entices students with smaller class sizes and opportunities for personal hands-on learning.

“I miss all the people, professors and one-on-one (interaction),” McCourt said of GCSU. “I wish that GCSU would expand (its) programs in the future, after the budget troubles.”

Proctor reported that the program does hope to expand in the future, though the process may take years.

“What we want is to have the flexibility to shift and change with the times,” Proctor said of adopting new majors. “For instance (adding majors) in things that are high priority to the state, such as educating students in science technology.”

Regardless of the college, students are transferring both in and out of GCSU based on majors and even minors. Even with minors like creative writing on hold, teachers and students alike clearly hope that GCSU will continue to add majors in the coming years, despite state budget cuts.

“I know I have had students transfer away from GCSU because we do not have an anthropology major,” anthropology professor Dr. Jeffrey Blick said. “An anthropology major would also act to draw people here as well.”

GCSU offers anthropology minors and 12 course offerings in the field.

“All we need is another staff member to have a major,” Blick said. “And there may be one or two staff members on campus who have a masters in anthropology, but might not be actively teaching.”

As a new freshman class floods the campus, majors all around campus swell with dozens of new faces. Despite the budget cuts, students remain excited and hopeful about the university’s future.

“Our nursing and education programs are strong,” sophomore Mary McTague said. “I think expanding our majors would bring a greater variety of students to the campus and that’s always good.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 4 2009. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry