History department sees drop in sophomore concentrators

One week after the deadline for members of the Class of 2013 pursuing A.B. degrees to select concentrations, departments are reporting steady — and in some cases dramatic — growth and declines in numbers. Though the numbers are still being finalized and are likely to change, several departments reported notably different numbers from what was expected.

The most significant change this year occurred in the history department, where only 56 sophomores signed in to the department. There are currently 80 members of the Class of 2012 in the department and 89 members of the Class of 2011 majoring in history, though these numbers include students who transferred in after the major selection deadline had passed.

“We are typically in the 90s,” departmental representative Alec Dun GS ’04 said of the department’s numbers. “We had what we thought of as a slight downtick [in recent years], but nothing like this.”

While the department still remains comparatively large despite this year’s decrease, history has traditionally been one of the most popular majors.

“We’ve had years where we’ve been in the 120s,” Dun explained. “We don’t think there’s a systemic problem, but there must be something going on.”

Dun said he and his colleagues in the history department remain unsure of the reasons underlying the drop in this year’s numbers. He suggested that the “Major Choices” initiative may be pushing students into smaller departments or that the reduction could be due to the fact that the department has not offered several of its largest courses in the past few years, which may have attracted younger students.

“Maybe that’s why it is, but that’s total supposition,” he said.

While the reasons behind this year’s decrease are unclear, Dun said he was certain of one thing in particular. “We do know that our majors are incredibly satisfied,” he noted. “We’ve gotten data on that.”

In contrast to the history department, the computer science department has seen a great increase in majors over the past two years.

Colleen Kenny-McGinley, the department’s undergraduate coordinator, said that this year 78 new majors joined the department, including 55 B.S.E. students and 23 A.B. students. Departmental representative David Walker said that a record 19 of these majors were women.

The department had 54 new majors last year and only 38 the year before. “Our enrollment has almost doubled in two years,” Walker said in an email. “It’s astounding.”

Walker suggested several possible causes for the sudden growth. “Employment opportunities in CS appear great right now and that may be a factor,” he said. “Our CS council has also been more active this year, planning fun functions like ‘Code @ Night’ — all-night parties for hackers working on assignments or just fun projects.”

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Geosciences and architecture, two of the University’s smaller departments, also attracted larger crowds than usual this spring.

“Our enrollment of 12 sophomores this spring is double last year’s, and has not been over 5–6 in over a dozen years,” geosciences departmental representative Gerta Keller said. “In addition, we have six freshmen that have already decided to major in geosciences and we expect there will be many more by the end of the next academic year.”

Keller said that freshman seminars, which include field trips to the Everglades, the Sierra Nevada, South Africa and Cyprus, are in large part responsible for the department’s increased size this year, introducing students to the field earlier on in their time at the University.

“The rise in GEO majors is highly gratifying and reflects both the dynamics of geosciences and their high relevance to our daily lives as a foundation in science and basis for understanding the changing Earth’s current issues and long-term prospects,” Keller added.

The department of architecture also saw the number of incoming majors almost double, with a current count of 21 confirmed concentrators in the Class of 2013, according to departmental representative Spyridon Papapetros.

Papapetros added that there were at least five confirmed students who signed into the program jointly administered by the civil engineering and architecture departments. There are currently 12 junior majors, with only two students in the joint program.

“Along with an increase in size in several of the undergraduate courses that we offer, these numbers reflect an increasing interest in architecture across campus,” Papapetros said.

Other departments have seen gradual rather than sudden growth. Economics remains the largest major on campus and is still growing, with 154 new concentrators this year, compared to 135 last year and 127 in the year prior. Politics is the second biggest, with 115 new majors, slightly higher than the numbers in the past two years, which were 103 and 107, respectively.

Molecular biology and psychology are tied for third, with 72 new majors. Psychology has 64 majors in the class of 2012 and 54 in the class of 2011. Mark Rose, the director of undergraduate studies for molecular biology, said the number of majors has been increasing by one to two students per year, on average, over the last decade.

Most other departments reported similar numbers to those of recent years. However, while some traditionally small departments such as architecture and geosciences have seen recent increases in numbers, others have remained small.

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese, for example, only saw six new majors this year, department representative Pedro Meira Monteiro said.

“I guess that this number could increase dramatically only if Princeton allowed its undergraduate students to concentrate in two different fields,” Meira Monteiro said. “My personal feeling is that such a change would be healthy for both small departments like ours and the community as a whole.”