Have you ever wondered what the most popular majors are on campus? What about the least common? Most people are familiar with the viral majors such as business and marketing. However, not many are aware of the small amount of students studying the less known majors like geology or theatre arts.

Communications has been an extremely popular field, with it being the major of over 300 undergraduate students at Cal Lutheran this year. “I think its so popular because its such a broad major and because there are so many different types of marketing,” said sophomore Kaitlin Wichmann, who is majoring in marketing communications with a public relations emphasis.

The social science division as a whole contains the most majors this year than any other division this year almost, with almost 900 undergraduates. However, there has been a drop in social science majors from last year of about 40.

The natural science field, containing major such as chemistry, exercise science, and biology have a large following as well of almost 800 students.

Senior Lindsey Kuramoto Transferred to Cal Lutheran her junior year and came in as an exercise science major. “I’ve played sports my entire life and because I suffered a traumatic sports injury back in 2010 I developed an interest in pursuing a career in physical therapy,” Kuramoto said.

In the spring of 2014, she switched to the less popular major of English when she realized she had a strong interest in reading and writing. Going from a major with more than 200 students, to one with about 50, she said it was an interesting transition.

“I often times think the amount of intensive reading and writing which being an English major entails plays a role in the lack of popularity of it,” Kuramoto said.

The programs with the least amount of majors are the humanities program and the creative arts program. With under 200 majors in each, they are not too common.

The core 21 program requires students to take a number of certain classes, some of which do not pertain to their majors. This gives students a taste of other majors, to see if another area of study interests them that they would not have known about before.

One of the requirements is a Viual and Performing Arts Participation requirement which must be fulfilled by students from all majors. With less than 40 students majoring in theatre arts at Cal Lutheran, beginning acting classes are still filled by students of other majors to learn the ins and outs of performing.

“Students involved in theatre classes and productions probably number between 300 and 350 students each semester – not to mention the audience embers,” Professor of Drama Kenneth Gardner said in an email interview.

With smaller departments, there is more individualized attention, especially at a small school like Cal Lutheran. “Taking a spectrum of classes not only promotes a taste of diverse subject matter, but gives students a chance to see how topics might be interrelated and may influence the way they think about the bigger picture,” Gardner said.

Dianna Rohrer

Published November 5, 2014