Some majors have more than 1,000 students enrolled while others have fewer than 10.
Though Ohio University offers several majors with smaller enrollment, classrooms aimed at students in those majors remain filled and discussion remains engaged.
This can be seen in OU's classics and world religions program. Steve Hays, associate professor of Classics and World Religions at OU, said more non-majors enroll in nearly all of the department’s classes because it has so few majors.
“The humanities classes serve non-majors as gen ed humanities courses, and they serve our majors as major requirements,” Hays said in an email.
Hays said although the higher-level courses in the department are more in-depth, non-major enrollments do not tend to decline.
“I think students enroll based on how interesting the topic is and pay little attention to the numeric level of the course,” he said in an email.
Although classes in another small program, geological sciences, can include some large classes filled with non-majors, labs and most classes are often smaller due to necessity and the rigorous coursework, Elizabeth Gierlowski-Kordesch, professor of geological sciences, said.
“The curriculum for a geology major is rigorous,” Gierlowski-Kordesch said in an email. “Chemistry, physics and calculus courses are required. Certainly not a major for the faint-hearted! There are many labs and field trips required for this major so large classes are just not the norm.”
Gierlowski-Kordesch said students in those smaller geology classes often can benefit from being with a small group of classmates.
“Because the students spend a lot of time together, especially on extended field trips, geology majors develop a great bond and make friendships that last a lifetime,” she said in an email. “Faculty really get to know our students because they work with them intensively.”
OU's women's, gender, and sexualities program currently has 21 students majoring in it, Kimberly Little, associate director of the program, said in an email.
Bobby Walker, a junior and the only women’s, gender, and sexualities studies major within the Honors Tutorial College, said she hasn’t noticed particularly small classes, but she doesn’t know a single other person with her major, although she knows some studying it for a minor or certificate program.
“I usually get a range of class sizes,” Walker said. “It’s never really small. I never really meet people who are (women’s, gender and sexuality) majors, or who are pursuing it because they want to pursue it seriously or think it’s a feasible career opportunity.”
Walker said although her classes can be large, the personal relationships and attention she gets from her meetings with her Honors Tutorial College faculty allow her to further discuss issues related to her major that are important to her as a Muslim and a woman of color.
“We looked at Muslim women, Islamophobia, Islamic feminism and representation of people in the Middle East,” she said. “With my tutorial, I was able to decide who I want to learn from, how I was going to learn it to the best of my abilities.”
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Camille Smith, a senior studying African American studies and sociology, said she has enjoyed being a part of the African American studies department because of the small size.
"Having a small department has definitely made an impact on my overall experience within African American studies," Smith said in an email. "I feel comfortable with all of the professors because I've gotten to know them on a one-on-one basis due to the small number of students within the department. I feel like we're more or less a family because all of the professors truly care about the students' experiences."
Even if non-major students fill in a larger class, some professors may find it beneficial to break them into groups for better discussion.
“I think it’s beneficial for any class or course to have a smaller number of students,” Loran Marsan, a visiting assistant professor in the women's, gender and sexuality studies department, said in an email. “This does lead to more in-depth discussion, more direct contact with the professor, and more critically engaging assignments and feedback between students and teachers.”
Marsan said next semester she is teaching a course with delfin bautista, director of OU's LGBT Center who uses they/them pronouns and the lowercase spelling of their name, in which the two plan to break the 60-person course into 30-person sections for better discussion.
“This is one of many tactics to get the benefits of a larger lecture class paired with frequent but smaller discussion sections,” Marsan said in an email.
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