College students will inevitably answer one question more times than they can count: What is your major? But minors get much less attention. From architectural studies to ethnic groups in America, the range of minors offered at Tufts is often overlooked.
Minors are additional recognition for completing a set of requirements in a department outside of a student's declared major. Each set of requirements is defined by that particular department, but usually consists of about five credits with a mix of required and elective courses. Minors are open to any student, regardless of his or her major.
Tufts offers a wide variety of possible minors to undergraduates. There are currently 49 different minors in the School of Arts and Sciences, just six shy of the 55 Arts and Sciences major options available to students. The School of Engineering has nine minors that engineering students can choose from.
This large number of minors covers a broad spectrum of topics. Some, such as art history and English, are also offered as majors, while others are only minor programs. These can be interdisciplinary, meaning they combine two or more fields of study into a more focused discipline, like mass communications and media studies, or they can be more specified subsets of majors, such as Roman archaeology.
It is not clear what percentage of the Tufts student body takes advantage of the wide variety of available minors. There is no record of the overall number of students graduating with minors, as the certification of minors is left to each individual department and is not under the umbrella of the Office of Undergraduate Education. But Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Jeanne Dillon has done studies on minors in the past, and has noticed general trends.
"Mass communications and media studies is the most popular minor, and that includes film studies as well," Dillon said. "The second most popular is entrepreneurial leadership."
There are large numbers of students enrolled in these minors compared to others.
"I'd say last year there were around 80 to 90 [students minoring] in communications and 50 to 60 in entrepreneurial leadership. They are really the biggest. After that, you see a drop to much smaller numbers for the other minors," Dillon said.
So why do students choose to minor in a particular subject? For some, minors are a way to explore a field they enjoy but do not want to study so extensively as to major in it.
Sophomore Brianna Atkinson is an intended English and community health double major. She is also planning to minor in dance.
"I've been dancing for a long time, so this is a way to expand my dance education," Atkinson said.
However, she acknowledges that dance does not fit into her future career plans. "There is not much you can do with [a dance minor]," Atkinson said. "It's more just a good thing to have under your belt."
For others, a minor is a way to enhance their major and broaden their career options. Sophomore Kavitha Narra is planning to major in international relations and minor in comparative religion, in addition to being pre-med. At first inspired to pursue a comparative religion minor because of an introduction to Hinduism class she took freshman year, Narra now realizes how many other benefits this minor offers.
"Religion can really shape society and how people view certain things, and as an IR major it's good to have that background," Narra said. "I also want to be a doctor, and going into the health care profession, you come across a lot of people. Knowing about different religions will help me deal with people and give me a way to see their perspective."
Narra is not alone in connecting her minor to a career. According to Dillon, Tufts sends out surveys to past graduates and often finds there is no correlation between a graduate's major and his or her current job. Minors, however, are different.
"I think that students can more easily see a career path coming out of a minor than out of a major," Dillon said. "That's because majors in Arts and Sciences are open to such a huge array of possible career fields." Comparatively, minors tend to be more focused.
Sometimes, however, students do not think about education or possible careers. They minor because they can.
Sophomore Marissa Fruchter is an intended clinical psychology major and also plans to minor in studio art.
"I really like art — I always have. I took art classes in high school, and knew I wanted to take a few in college, so I figured if I was going to be taking them anyway, I might as well make it a minor," Fruchter said.
