Behind the Scenes: The Alternatives to Changing Your Major

When our group first started out on our final story of the quarter, we thought we were going to be focusing on tarot cards. I began by emailing tarot card readers and astrologists in the San Luis Obispo community, looking to see if any were interested in being interviewed. Much to our amazement, we received many replies that agreed to be a part of our story.

Unfortunately, after our first interview, we realized that our topic was too broad, and that we needed to come up with another story idea. We were told by our professor of a new online form called the Individualized Change of Major Agreement (ICMA), which allows for Cal Poly students to begin the process of switching to a new major.

To learn more about this, we went to interview Dr. Debra Valencia-Laver, an Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Valencia-Laver gave us a lot of useful information on the ICMA and how the process works for students who want to switch their major. Luckily, she also talked about what students should do if they can’t get into the major of their choice. This comes in a little bit later.

Audra Wright looks for the right office to interview Dr. Debra Valencia-Laver about the ICMA.
Audra Wright looks for the right office to interview Dr. Debra Valencia-Laver about the ICMA for her editorial portion.

After our group member on the editorial position, Audra Wright, met with our professor to go over her story outline, she had some more news for us. She confessed that a story purely about switching majors would be too difficult to cover in the short period of time we had left, and told us that our professor suggested to make the story more about alternatives for students that couldn’t switch into their desired major.

“Before this project I didn’t realize how many alternatives there are if a student is unable to switch his or her major. It was especially eye-opening to learn about the College of Liberal Art’s development of the interdisciplinary major and its ability to allow students with a low GPA to switch majors,” said Wright.

Even though our group wasn’t too thrilled to start over onto another story topic, we agreed that it would be the best decision to change the topic in order for a better story. Suddenly, our multimedia group member, Laura Daniele, knew exactly who we should interview next. She remembered a friend of hers that was unable to switch from crop science to biology, so later that day we talked to mechanical engineering senior Peter Pratt.

Laura Daniele gets her camera ready for an environmental portrait of Peter Pratt.
Laura Daniele gets her camera ready for an environmental portrait of mechanical engineering senior Peter Pratt.

“Since I couldn’t switch my major at first, I decided that joining a club on campus that had some parts of the major in it was the next best thing. The PROVE Lab supplemented what I was missing in my current major, and allowed me to immerse myself in my interests,” said Pratt.

Since our broadcast group member, Josh Munk, had originally done his video interview with an astrologist, he was relieved we were able to find another person to do it on such short notice. Pratt was able to share how difficult it is for many students to get into the major they want, and that there are plenty of other options if the major is full or they can’t switch in, such as finding an internship in the desired field or joining a club with similar interests.

Being a group of seniors at Cal Poly, many of us didn’t know about all the different alternatives to changing a major. Munk had wanted to switch his major from journalism to communications a while ago, but was unable to get into the communications program.

Josh Munk decides on the perfect shot for his creative video interview.
Josh Munk decides on the perfect shot for his creative video interview.

“This topic was really interesting to me because I tried to transfer majors, but was never able to, and so learning about the process and how things have begun changing has been cool to see,” said Munk.

As we tried to make the most of our limited time, we discovered that this is a topic that not a lot of people know too much about. Daniele was especially excited about the opportunity to share alternatives with people who might be stuck in their major.

“Switching majors has a negative stigma at Cal Poly and everyone thinks it’s super hard, so they don’t attempt it. So, I think it’s good that we’re finding alternatives to changing majors and explaining the process better,” said Daniele.

Laura Daniele figures out possible questions for her survey that she will incorporate into one of her multimedia components.
Laura Daniele figures out possible questions for a survey that she will incorporate into one of her multimedia components.

Overall, we think this story turned out pretty well for us getting a late start. This project had our group learn some new information about alternatives to changing majors and we got to meet many people knowledgeable on the subject. As this is our last piece for our senior project, we really enjoyed the experience of working in these different roles and we gained a lot of insight on how to craft an accurate and newsworthy story.