Students gather at the Student Union Ballroom for the Major Fair this Wednesday, Oct 9. They have the opportunity to talk to faculty and professors of different majors. Photo by Charlotte Lao / The Daily Campus.
Students gathered in the Student Union Ballroom on Wednesday afternoon to attend the annual Major Fair, a fair that showcases many of the majors and departments available to students at UConn. The fair is a collaboration between the Academic Center for Exploratory Students (ACES) and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS).
Tables were spread throughout the brightly lit ballroom with differently colored balloons used to help students locate their majors of interest. Students were given a ticket as they entered the fair that could be signed at each table they went to. Students who went to at least five tables could be entered to win a prize. Help sheets were also handed out with a map of the ballroom on the back.
Julie Lynch, an academic advisor for ACES, helped set up the fair and was in attendance. Lynch spoke of the ways the fair could be useful to students.
“It’s an opportunity for students to be able to explore majors if they have not decided on one, explore an additional major if they already have one, or minors,” said Lynch.
The rain didn’t stop students from attending and exploring the many majors in attendance, such as molecular and cell biology, Italian literary and cultural studies and digital media and design, to name a few.
“Departments like it, because they are able to talk to a lot of students in a very short period of time and sell their majors … students don’t have to run around campus trying to connect to all of these individual departments. Everyone is under one roof, so we’ve gotten really good feedback,” said Lynch.
There was a mixture of undeclared students looking for majors and declared students looking for other possible majors to study. One declared student who attended the fair was Jehan Thurainayugam, a first-semester physics major. Thurainayugam heard of the fair through a UConn Instagram story.
“I was planning on changing my major to MCB so I thought that I could get the information to do that,” said Thurainayugam.
There were also undeclared students at the fair, such as Kalaiya Blanchard, a first-semester student. Kalaiya heard of the event through an email sent to her from the school.
“I’m undecided right now so I’m just trying to learn about possible programs I could be interested in. I’ve been looking at individualized majors, ” said Blanchard.
Lynch said that the event has always had a large amount of majors on display and students exploring them. There were 56 majors and departments represented in the fair.
“We’ve always had a really good turnout, we really have kind of outgrown this space. We don’t even have enough tables for every major so some of them are sharing,” said Lynch.
Brian Novak, a fifth-semester English major, was also at the major fair and thought highly of it.
“I thought [the fair] was very helpful,” Novak said, “I was able to look into a number of different majors and I was able to better grow my understanding of what’s available to me here at UConn.”
Edison Escobar is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at edison.escobar@uconn.edu.
