Camila Figueroa is a multimedia journalist for Samford News Network
The picture is courtesy of @samfordcam
Last Thursday, Samford held its annual Majors Connection Fair on Brewer Plaza. The Majors Connection Fair is meant for undeclared students or students wishing to change their major or add a minor. The fair hosts several booths with students and professors from each department ready to talk to students wanting to learn more about their programs.
This year undeclared students were required to attend the Majors Connections Fair.
According to Samford’s 2022-2023 School Year Fact list, there are 116 undeclared students in the freshman class. In other words, out of the 1080 students in the freshman class, 10% are undeclared. There are 27 majors Samford offers, including the Undeclared major, and the Undeclared major has the same amount of students as the amount of students in the nursing major. The Undeclared major also has more students than 23 of the 27 majors.
Dana Basinger, the advisor for Howard School of Arts and Sciences, meets with several undeclared students and was able to give insight as to why students go undeclared in their first year.
Dana Basinger said, “I often say the the entering freshman students are unofficial undeclared of undecided. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, the numbers have been consistent. We do have a lot of undeclared majors, so of those are athletes. The athletics department likes for them to come in undeclared, it helps them with their NCAA regulations, we also have pre-pharm students who are technically undeclared students… the rest of them, this is probably a little over 100 of students, that are truly undeclared that are not sure what they will do.”
Dana Basinger was also able to give insight as to what Samford is doing to help the undeclared students find a declared major. Basinger said, We’re doing something different with our undeclared majors this year[…] we have them all together in their foundations class…every single week we talk about things that happen to do with choosing their majors…before they went to the Majors Fair, they did a lot of research into Samford majors and what opportunities were available to them…we send them to the Career Development Center, we send them to talk to advisors across campus, we have them research jobs they can get with particular majors…”
With the help of advisors, the Majors Fair, and research, undeclared students are being encouraged to find a major within the next year or two.
Watch the story on Samford News Network.
