Favorite Majors: Incoming Freshmen Choose Mountain Rec.

Incoming freshmen seem to prefer kayaking to calculus.

            Out of the incoming 542 incoming students this year, the mountain recreation management department has the highest number of students claiming 55 of them while only 9 have joined the mathematic and information sciences department.

            "We always want more students," said James Bozeman, the math department head, "but what we do have is actually a higher percentage of students than the national average."

            The national average of math majors within colleges with that degree is 1%. The nine incoming students that are math majors make up 1.66% of the class. Last year the incoming math majors made up 1.51%, so as Bozeman said the major at LSC "is small but not unusually small."

            Bozeman says that the students can also have more personal relationships with the professors because of the small department size.

            "Almost all of our majors can tutor in the math resource room, so there are a lot of benefits in that sense as well," said Bozeman.

            Another thing that does not factor in this number is atmospheric science majors who double major with math, but are not counted with the math majors because it is not there first major. Bozeman says if they were counted as well, the students counted as math majors would probably double.

The incoming mountain recreation management majors make up 10% of the class, while it only made up 7.5% of the incoming class last fall.

            "It stands out," said mountain recreation management professor Thomas Anderson. "The type of students attracted to our program like hands-on experiential learning."

There are skill courses such as rock and ice climbing, mountaineering, and learning to ski and ride, as well as standard classes with book learning.

            The program also qualifies for the NEBHE (New England Board of Higher Education) program so some nearby out of state students can do this major while paying tuition that is lower than normal out of state tuition.

            While the department does not do any specific marketing besides what admissions does, they do have a FaceBook page and have got many new students by word of mouth.

            "We have students who like our program and tell people about it," said Anderson. Though, he thinks that it is the extra push that admissions gave this year for the school as a whole that brought their numbers from 35 new students last year to 55 this year.

            As a whole, the school has 80 more incoming students this fall, than it did last fall.

The departments following mountain recreation management with the highest numbers of incoming freshmen are atmospheric sciences with 51, Exercise Science with 50, and Business Administration with 46.

            Business Administration was the most popular major last year accounting for almost 10% of the new students, while it only now accounts for 8.5%.

            Following math with low numbers this year are liberal studies with 10 students, and natural sciences and English, philosophy, and film studies tied with 22 new students each.