Every year, Ohio University does its best to grow and change, constantly adapting to the new times and the new students. Over the past decade, OU’s academic catalog has received a lot of new opportunities for students regarding majors, minors and certificates.
From the start of the 2010 decade to the end, OU has added several schools, departments and majors to provide more opportunities for students to learn.
Some departments or schools didn’t see as much, but simply added new majors within pre-existing areas of study.
Various programs revolving around the arts received a lot of new opportunities for students. The School of Art + Design added an interior architecture major; the dance school added a performance and choreography major; the film school added a film major, rather than just a minor; and the school of theater added a stage management major and a theater performance major with acting or musical theater tracks.
The theater performance major with the acting or musical theater tracks is celebrating its first year as an option for students at OU. A lot of students have generated excitement over the new addition, and Lauren Janoschka, a freshman on the musical theater track, is one of them.
“You can make opportunity wherever you go if you have the drive and want to explore,” Janoschka said. “And OU has so many opportunities if you choose to engage with them.”
In addition to the new majors, OU has completely changed the format of the Media Arts and Studies school. Where people used to be able to choose majors like Audio for Music Production or Post Production for Moving Image, digital media, media management, media studies and video production, the school revamped the majors with a media arts and studies major, games and animation, integrated media, media and social change, music production and recording industry and screenwriting and producing.
But that’s just for the arts programs. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, better known as STEM, has drastically changed as well.
The chemical and biomolecular engineering program added the biological track, energy and environment track and materials track, and the school of electrical engineering and computer science added the electrical engineering with computer engineering track. The environmental and plant biology program added a field ecology major, and mathematics added a mathematical statistics major.
“The more majors you have, the more likely you are to pull from different backgrounds and places in general, so it’ll help expand the diversity on campus,” Shea Shelton, a junior studying Spanish education, said.
But it’s not just the arts and STEM programs that added new opportunities. Education, human studies and other professions have added new majors as well.
The English department added a cultures, rhetoric and theory writing major, a literature and writing major and a pre law major. The geography department added a globalization and development major. The human and consumer sciences department added a customer service leadership major and the interdisciplinary health studies department added an integrated healthcare studies major.
The international studies department added a war and peace major, the management department added an entrepreneurship major, and counseling and higher education added a human services major. Finally, the teacher education program added child development and expanded its physical science majors to have a chemistry track, physics and chemistry track and physics track.
Jenny Hall-Jones, senior associate vice president and dean of students at OU, believes adding new majors creates a new scope of diverse opportunities for students.
“We want to make sure that we’re getting both the breadth and depth of knowledge that every college student wants to get when they graduate with a college degree,” Hall-Jones said.
Though a lot of the departments have added or dropped new majors, they’ve relatively stayed the same as they were at the beginning of the decade. However, there have been some completely new departments added.
OU has added the analytics and information systems department, engineering technology and management school, rehabilitation and communication sciences school, social and public health department and sports administration. OU also redid the recreation and sport pedagogy department by adding the applied health sciences and wellness department. This made both areas more focused and provided new majors throughout.
Hall-Jones knows the new additions are an important part of keeping students, faculty and employers happy.
“As an institution, we need to be constantly assessing students’ desires, wants and needs about what they want to study, but then also listening to our partners in the world about what kind of skill sets do they want our students to be graduating with,” Hall-Jones said.
