<nother big year for Carleton science departments. Sophomores have chosen majors, and the results are in. With a total of 62 sophomores declaring, Biology tops the charts for the most majors this year.
Coming in second, Political Science boasts 50 new majors with 17 in the traditional Poli-Sci field and 33 specializing in International Relations. Social Science stronghold Psychology came in third, with 46 declared majors.
With 38 majors, Economics nabbed fourth place, with History on the department’s tail with 37 new majors. Next, sliding into sixth place is English with 34 new bookworms. Honorable mentions include Chemistry (29 new majors), Mathematics (26), Computer Science (24) and Geology (23).
This year was not Biology’s first banner year in major declarations; the class of 2010 has eight fewer majors than the class of 2009. This year approximately 12% of sophomores declared Biology, compared to 13% a year ago.
“It’s the study of life. It’s how you work. How could you not want to learn about that?” Biology major and teaching assistant Ann Butkowski ’08 said.
The Social Science, Humanities and Arts & Literature students are spread widely across thirty other majors.
Psychology showed a rise in this year’s declarations. Last year, 34 students entered the world of Freud and Pavlov, but this year, that number jumped to 46 (6.4% of sophomores in 2009, compared to 8.9% of sophomores this year).
Like Psychology, Geology too showed a marked increase from last year’s major enrollment, with 23 new majors compared to last year’s 15.
Other significant trends include a decrease in History majors—37 majors in 2010 versus 47 in 2009, and the same ten-person drop in English.
Despite the seemingly low numbers for the Humanities and Arts & Literature, the introduction of Cinema and Media Studies (11 majors declared) may have decreased numbers in other areas.
Other departments where students declared include Sociology/Anthropology (19), Studio Art (17), Religion (15), Physics (13), American Studies (9), French and Francophone Studies (8), and Greek (2).
Linguistics also continued the presence that it established last year. Although technically a Special Major, the department has four new majors this year and three last year, up from only one declared Linguistics major two years ago.
Single-person major declarations include African-American Studies (Kenneth Coleman), German (Hannah Goodwin) and Latin American Studies (Anna Losacano). Single special majors include Archeology (George Kennedy) and Japanese (Lauren Burkhart). On being the sole Latin American Studies major, Losacano was not feeling all too lonely: “It gives me some mystique,” she said.