Author: Anne Ewbank
Occidental’s campus is often described as a “bubble,” an environment where students are somewhat isolated from the outside world in more ways than geography. Not only are students isolated from what’s happening beyond Campus Road, but the educational experience they receive is itself rather uncommon and unusual compared to other schools. Many of the stereotypical images of college—the large lecture halls, the classes taught by disinterested T.A.’s, the possibility of having to stick around an extra year to complete all the requirements for one’s major—are simply not a part of the Occidental liberal arts experience.
One of the many benefits of the liberal arts experience is the flexibility and specificity of the majors and minors liberal arts colleges can offer. Whereas large state universities present students with a rigid list of concentrations and expect them to choose one, Occidental emphasizes fluid, adaptable programs of study. Students, by selecting their own individualized academic plans, are challenged to customize their college experience. Nevertheless, with the ongoing economic recession, Occidental students can’t help but wonder if their friends earning vocational degrees in nursing and criminology at other schools might have the right idea. Pursuing a liberal arts degree in today’s market may be viewed as an indulgent move when the value of a major seems so highly correlated with the chance of finding a job after graduation. It is little surprise, then, that recession-proof, career-oriented paths of study like economics, psychology, biology and Diplomacy and World Affairs (DWA) are among Occidental’s most popular areas of study.
With 183 declared students, economics is by far the college’s biggest major, a position it has held since overtaking DWA in spring 2008. As of spring 2011, with 145 students, DWA was second-most popular, followed closely by biology and psychology. Nearly 30 percent of all declared students have opted to seek a degree in one of these four most popular fields. The other 70 percent have found a place in one of Occidental’s 28 other majors. From the new Latino/Latina American studies major to the established ECLS program, the diversity of available academic paths at the college reflects the wide-ranging interests of the student body. On top of its 31 majors, Occidental offers 11 minor-only subjects like classical studies and Russian.
Allison Post (junior) is a double major who has declared majors in biology (as one of 126 students) and theater (one of 37), but her primary passion is the stage. She admitted that the current economic conditions influenced her to pursue biology foremost and theater secondarily. “I’ve been taking tons of theater classes since I got here. I want to have an employable major, but I love theater,” she said. “I want to do both, but I also want to get a job after college.”
Dr. Gretchen North, chair of the biology department, acknowledged the appeal of biology to career-minded students like Post. “Students want to do something useful—many of our students are interested in public health and medicine.” North said biology has always been one of the top five most popular majors at Occidental, but she pointed out that occupationally-anxious students aren’t the only driving force behind that statistic. “We have charismatic faculty who are all very active in research. Students as freshmen attend their classes and are inspired to become biology majors,” she said.
North said that economics is probably the most popular major because of its potential for students who want to go into business after college. Economics major Lito Nicolai (sophomore) corroborates North’s point—he said economics is interesting to him as well as practical and potentially lucrative. He said the department’s curriculum and faculty also persuaded him to select the major. “I hated math in high school, but I rediscovered it here. Econ is really just applied math, anyway, and the department here is good. Some of the professors are really excellent.”
Like Post, Nicolai had to balance his passion for the arts with the desire for a marketable degree. “I actually came to Oxy wanting to study art,” he said. Nicolai maintained that he has not had to abandon art or his other interests for the sake of economics. He said he practices art in his free time and still has the time to acquire minors in Japanese and mathematics. “The modeling techniques I’m learning [in math classes] help a lot because I do digital art in my spare time.” He stresses that he hasn’t compromised his love of art. “The thing about Oxy is that it’s not a state school; we have enough leeway here to take classes outside of our majors and learn other things. I’ve had the opportunity to take a lot of random classes in stuff I like. In the end we can apply what we learn here to whatever we want to do,” he said.
Lauren Siverly (sophomore) is another student who wants a little bit of everything in her college education and feels able to explore many subjects at Occidental. She is also the first student to declare a Latino/a and Latin American Studies major. “I love the interdisciplinary aspect of the major, and I think the idea of interdisciplinary learning is what drew me to a liberal arts college like Oxy in general. It’s so awesome that I can take classes in what feels like every department, including music and education, and see how they fit together,” she said.
Latino/a and Latin American Studies is one of the college’s most interdepartmental majors and a good example of how classes from many different departments can come together to compose a unique path of study. The distinct qualities of majors like this help students like Siverly narrow in on their true passions. “I originally came in to Oxy dead-set on being a DWA major but after taking a few courses in the department I realized that I find my passion much more in the history, culture, language and politics of Latin America,” she said.
For students hoping to narrow their cultural studies even further than Siverly has with her Latin American Studies track, Occidental offers language majors Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French and Group Language, which involves studying either Spanish or French alongside linguistics or another language.
As a Group Language major studying Spanish and linguistics, Danielle McCown (senior) is content with the specific confines of her major. “I really like learning languages. I originally mistook this calling to mean I should go into international relations because I love languages and learning about other cultures and different people. However, after taking DWA 101 I found out DWA was not for me. I finally realized that I should just major in the one thing that I’m good at and love,” she said. Linguistics is a sister field to computer science, a subject McCown is interested in. “I plan on going to grad school for linguistics or computational linguistics, so I’m not worried about finding a job because those are both fairly practical fields,” she said. She noted that her small major and career path is unique. “I only know one other Group Language major who actually is doing the same thing I’m doing.”
Professor Michael Shelton, the only faculty member in the linguistics program at Occidental, said that the department is expanding because of high demand for a major. “There has been high enrollment in all of our linguistics courses over the past few years, oftentimes with long waitlists. “Growing a program takes time. That’s why the linguistics offerings are still relatively small. We are hoping to add another position in Spanish/linguistics in the future, which would allow both the linguistics minor as well as linguistics in Spanish to grow at the college.”
He added that the linguistics minor at Occidental is interdisciplinary and includes courses in departments like cognitive science and philosophy. “Four years ago we updated and restructured the minor to better meet the needs of the students and to incorporate the new courses I am able to offer into the curriculum as well as the language-focused courses being offered in other departments,” Shelton said.
Even among small language majors, Japanese is the smallest. As of this semester, there are just four declared Japanese majors. Kristen Riehle (junior) is one of them. “I have no idea what I’ll do with Japanese yet,” Riehle said. “But everyone I know who’s a Japanese major is applying to the JET [Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme].” She said that there’s a important upside to being in a small major. “Everybody knows each other.”
The flexibility of the liberal arts allows Occidental to adapt its majors and their curricula as students’ interests fluctuate and the prevailing academic discourse changes. For example, in 2008 the Women’s Studies/Gender Studies major was incorporated into the Critical Theory and Social Justice (CTSJ) major. The school hoped CTSJ would incorporate Women’s Studies/Gender Studies into what would be a comprehensive major covering many social justice issues. Sometimes, though, changes like these add more difficulty to Occidental’s already confusing sea of program acronyms and abbreviations. The names of many of Occidental’s majors have been modified to reflect their curricula rather than their common, vernacular names. What most people would call an “English department,” for example, is ECLS. Urban studies is UEP and international affairs is DWA.
Some students worry about what such unconventional names might convey to future employers. Taylor Rowland (sophomore), for example, describes herself as a film major, but according to the Registrar, she is an art history and visual arts major with an emphasis in film and media studies. “I understand since the department wants to emphasize the fact that it deals with various media and not just film, but it’s frustrating because students feel like our degrees should say ‘film’ somewhere, especially for those of us who want to break into the industry,” she said.
Liza Veale (senior), a CTSJ major, says that too many students try to get a practical education at Occidental, which she believes is only one aspect of attending the college. “This isn’t a trade school,” she says. “Here, I’m learning how to be a conscientious, responsible human being. There’s always the possibility you’ll outgrow the major you choose at 18. I’ll use CTSJ every day of my life.” Veale said that she first enrolled in CTSJ classes because they interested her, not because she intended to major in the department. But after a few courses, she found she loved the program and wanted to declare it as her major. Her parents were initially unreceptive. “I had a hard time explaining my major declaration to my parents because I didn’t understand it myself at the time,” she said. “But I feel like a lot of people don’t put much thought into declaring their majors but choose one by default.”
As for how she ultimately decided on CTSJ, she said, “I am really interested in politics, so I am a CTSJ major with an emphasis in politics. It’s not in the catalog, but CTSJ is a major where you can take a class in almost any department, and it’ll fulfill a CTSJ requirement. The major doesn’t have any one mode of learning it. The special thing about this kind of education is that it allows for the cross-pollination of ideas and exposure to different schools of thought.”
Like many students, Veale isn’t absolutely sure of what she will do after graduation. “I don’t know how yet, but I have so many options, and it’s kind of scary. This sounds vague, but I want to improve the world. What I do know is I’ve spent tons of money at this elite institution getting an education. What’s worth doing more, making money for myself or making the world a less miserable place?”
Between the rising cost of college tuition and the unwelcome job market, this is a hard time to have to select a major that is simultaneously interesting and worthwhile. Many students try to find a balance by double-majoring, minoring, double-minoring or even pursuing academic interests in their spare time, all the while considering pressure from parents, student loans and their own expectations when choosing a major. The benefits of an liberal arts education—namely, well-roundedness and learning how to think—are obviously attractive to students who chose to enroll at Occidental, but they are also hard to quantify and attach a particular value to.
In the commencement address he gave at Kenyon College in 2005, David Foster Wallace stated, “I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.”
For Occidental students, the real test is not figuring out how to work some alchemy to turn their liberal arts majors into career gold. It is finding the correct proportion of practicality and personal enjoyment in their studies and learning to realize a sense of self-worth.
“Personally, I’m not fazed by labels anymore,” Rowland said. “It’s what I do with t
hat label that matters.”
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