In “If Students Are Smart, They’ll Major in What They Love” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, AHA member Cecilia Gaposchkin advises undergraduates about the importance of choosing a major according to one’s enthusiasms. What is valuable to potential employers, she notes, “is not the content of the major, but rather the ability to think with and through that information.” Gaposchkin is assistant dean of faculty for premajor advising at Dartmouth College. She is also a participant in AHA’s highly successful Tuning initiative, which provides resources to departments who want to help their students think about the usefulness of the history major. Participants have even been working on articulating how history majors can follow their intellectual interests without sacrificing practical imperatives.
