By Emma Reilly
Editor-in-Chief
Every three years, Washington College’s Student Government Association conducts a self-reported survey to gather information related to students’ majors. SGA Secretary of Academics junior Larissa Conte was primarily responsible for facilitating the survey and putting together the 2023 State of the Majors report.
“State of the Majors is mostly a general check up to see what majors are popular and what students’ opinions are,” Conte said.
SGA shared the 176-page report with students, staff, and faculty on Feb. 16, via email.
Working in collaboration with SGA’s academics committee, Conte made changes to the previous iteration of the survey. According to Conte, the committee was most interested in altering the process to accommodate for double majors.
Conte and her committee also made the decision to allow for open-ended comments, providing students with an opportunity to elaborate on their thoughts.
“I left the open-ended comments at the end for people to express whatever they could or whatever they felt couldn’t be expressed in just ‘I felt very strongly about this,’” she said.
The survey was made available to students on Dec. 5, 2022. In the campus-wide email, the SGA noted that “the results…will be analyzed and used to recommend changes within departments to enhance [the] student experience.”
Students who completed the survey could enter into a raffle to win an Amazon gift card.
107 students responded to the survey in December, with the majority of respondents being seniors, according to the report.
33% of respondents were double majors; 35 students were able to take advantage of the new option to report on multiple fields of study.
English majors dominated the respondent pool, with a total of 20 majors filling out the survey. Physics, environmental science, and biology majors were the second most-represented departments, with 10 respondents each. 29 departments were represented by the respondents.
According to Conte, the biggest takeaways from 2023’s report is the impact of turnover on students and the lack of coordination between departments when it comes to students with multiple majors and/or minors.
“A lot of comments I saw would be like, ‘my one department is super flexible, but the other is super straightforward.’ One person was offered to either drop their major or take another semester,” Conte said.
Respondents took to the open comment section to detail their concerns related to this issue and others.
“I wish there was more communication between my majors and my minor,” a political science and human development double major said. “I need[ed] very strict advising and unfortunately when my political science advisor left, that all fell apart. Now I’m going to be scrambling my senior year to finish everything.”
“I love the art history major, but it is insanely small,” another respondent said.
Another student, an environmental studies major, said that the department’s faculty were noticeably “understaffed” and “burnt out.”
This observation was mirrored by a French major, who said that “resources in the French department are obviously stretched too thin since downsizing to one professor. My quality of French education has clearly declined since [Professors of French] Drs. Pears and Maynard left.”
According to Conte, it is important for the wider campus community to be made aware of the difficulties faced by students who are involved in multiple departments and faculty who are running departments impacted by turnover.
After the report was completed, Professor of English, Director of Writing, and Co-Director of the Cromwell Center for Teaching and Learning Dr. Sean Meehan and Chair of Anthropology and Archaeology, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Co-Director of the Cromwell Center for Teaching and Learning Dr. Emily Steinmetz met with Conte to discuss how professors can be more accommodating in light of the pandemic.
According to Conte, she also plans to present the State of the Majors to WC’s faculty and provost.
Students with questions about the State of the Majors report can contact Conte at lconte2@washcoll.edu. The PDF file of the report itself is attached to the Feb. 7 SGA Senate minutes, which were sent out via email on Feb. 9.