FINDING A MAJOR

Finding aMAJOR

The college offers resources to help students find a career path.

Hailea Redinger | Reporter

For students that come into college undecided on a major, Hutchinson Community College has resources to help them choose a career path.

Counselors try to offer as many students as they can a place into any success seminar orientation class or they put them in a career exploration class.

“In that class you're going to take some career assessments and so those career assessments are supposed to help you decide on a major, DJ Chastain, Coordinator of Advising and Career Development, said.

Finding a major can be tough but there are a few different ways that students can find something they will be interested in.

“The thing about a two-year college is that depending on the major, for the most part, any degree they need requires pretty simple classes,” said Chastain.

So if they're in the middle of the semester and they decide to declare a major, there's not gonna be a lot of change because they'll still have to finish their Associate of Arts or their Associate of Science degree. What usually happens and what most parents want to happen is if the student is gonna take a gap year is that they're gonna work.

“My recommendation is to always see a career counselor,” Chastain said. “A lot of people take a year off because they don't want to spend money on classes trying to figure out what they want to do. They'll just go work for a year. The thing is if they do that the right way we have classes in the first semester designed to help them figure out what they're interested in.”

The Student Success Center on campus helps students who don't

Hailea Redinger | Photo

Staci Unruh, acadimic adviser and DJ Chastain, coordinator of advising and career devlopment. taking a photo for the dragons tails magazine.

know what career path to take.

“I come in and speak to the classes and I talk about the Myers Briggs Type Indicator which is a personality inventory which also helps students find a major. I speak to about 10-12 classes and I teach my own classes a semester about that stuff,” Chastain said. “We give two career- type assessments called the Myer Briggs Type Indicator and the Strong Interest Inventory.”

For some students, a year away from school can help them decide what they want to do with their future. For others, a career exploration class is just what they need with the intention of learning new skills while exploring careers that fit their personality and ideal work environment.

From the polls...

82.5%

of students that were listed as an undecided major

74.8%

of students that did not take a year off of college

67.8%

of students that haven't switched majors

60.8%

of students that knew a career exploration class was offered by HutchCC