ESS 806: Are you in the right major?

Laura Vogt:
Hello, and thank you for joining us for this week’s episode of The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m your host, Laura Vogt, the Associate Director of Marketing and Communications in the College of Engineering. This week I’m excited to introduce, Mark Asta, the Executive Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, to explore what to do if you feel like you aren’t in the right major.

So off the top, I need to make sure everyone understands that transfer students are not able to change their major, but there are things that you can do if you feel the major isn’t quite what you thought it would be. So that’s one of the things we’ll talk about today. So hi Mark, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Mark Asta:
Yeah, thank you.

Laura Vogt:
And can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role in Berkeley Engineering?

Mark Asta:
Absolutely. So I am a faculty member in the Material Science and Engineering Department, and I’m also the executive Associate Dean for the College of Engineering. And so in that role, I help with academic programs. I try to interface with students as much as I can, and I’m generally here to support the success of our academic programs.

Laura Vogt:
Well again, thank you for being here today. So a lot of our students when they start at Berkeley Engineering already come in with a major selected, and there are a few that are engineering undeclared, but so those ones still have to do some research to figure out what they want to declared major to be. So how do you think students can find out more about the majors at Berkeley, and what can they do with those majors?

Mark Asta:
That’s such a great question, and I have to say that unfortunately there’s no simple answer to this. I think, as students find out at Berkeley, you have to be a little bit resourceful. But the good thing is that there are a lot of good resources to understand better the majors and the opportunities they enable. So just to name a few, there are department websites and often they give you a little bit of a window into at least what the research going on is and how they see it as being impactful to the world we live in.
They can talk to peers of course, and I always want to stress that it’s really the senior students in the programs who understand those majors the best. And so particularly for majors that might have a student group associated with them, go to a few of their meetings, talk to some of the peers, particularly those maybe who are in their senior year and can really help folks understand what they’re doing and where their opportunities are ahead of them. Faculty love to talk about their majors, don’t be shy, come up to them after a class, talk to a little bit about what the major’s about, what they think is the real opportunities with the major. And of course the ESS advisors are super knowledgeable as well. So I would say not really any one resource, but I think there’s many that they should think about and talk to. And I’ll just add, don’t believe everything you read on Reddit.

Laura Vogt:
I like the idea. It’s probably not a bad thing though to check in multiple places to get more information about a major if you’re really questioning it.

Mark Asta:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I would say that there’s also one special resource that I think is a particularly good one that the college offers and that is a one unit seminar class called E92.

Laura Vogt:
And you’re the one teaching that this semester?

Mark Asta:
I am indeed. So I’m happy to plug it. I’d be happy to tell you more about that class and why it might be of interest to folks who are trying to make a decision on majors.

Laura Vogt:
Definitely. It’s a one unit class, right?

Mark Asta:
It’s a one unit class, a pass, no pass class, meets once a week for a seminar. And the seminar is given by faculty or alumni from each engineering program. And so what they do in their seminar is they discuss the major, its requirements, and most importantly, what type of work they’re doing now that was enabled by what they learned through their majors. So a lot of alumni come back, some of them who are even CEOs or CTOs, and they talk about how their experience at Berkeley and the particular major really gave them the tools to enable their career pathway. And sometimes those careers evolve in ways that are completely unanticipated. And so I think it’s often very exciting for students to understand that a major doesn’t lock you into one particular direction in your career, it launches you, it gives you that foundation. But to hear those stories about what people do when they leave Berkeley I think is really inspiring. And also I think uplifting, just to know that there’s a lot of possibilities when you get out.

Laura Vogt:
I think that’s great. I really like the idea of learning more from the people that are in the job and doing it currently for all of our students, but especially for transfer students. Do you think they’re only able to get a job or an internship in that specific major that they’re getting their bachelor’s in?

Mark Asta:
Yeah, it’s such a great question. I think that there are majors which tend to be pipelines to certain companies, and I think students know that. And then you get the impression that if you don’t have that major, there’s no opportunity to join certain companies and so forth. But I really think that’s not the case.
Okay. So let’s talk about, there’s many career paths after you leave your major. So let’s imagine you’re going to go straight into industry. So what is industry looking for somebody and why does the major sometimes track very closely with who gets the jobs? Employers are looking for a certain set of skills, and they know that certain majors are giving students those skills and that background in the courses that are associated with the major. But there’s other ways that students can get these skills that the companies are looking for. It can happen from extracurricular clubs that they may be in, so they might be on a rocket team or one of the vehicle competition teams and developing certain skills there that resonate really well with companies. There can be people. I think the key thing is internships. If you’ve had some internship experience with a company, it’s gone really well, that can open certain doors and say to other employers that you’ve been successful in a certain area of technology or something like that.
Sometimes students think they have to take a bunch of programming classes to be attractive for certain jobs, but interestingly, they could be doing a research experience with a faculty member and developing a code base that the company will look at more favorably than just what courses they took. So I think it’s really important to know that there are many pathways to certain careers and it’s not super limited because you’re not in a particular major. And so I think it’s important for students to understand that. And what’s so great about Berkeley is there are all those other opportunities beyond just the classroom. And I think students should really be thinking about that and how do they optimize those experiences and really getting everything they can out of Berkeley to help set them up for success in their future career.

Laura Vogt:
And if they wanted to go into grad school, I often see people have their graduate degrees in a different major than their bachelor’s degrees.

Mark Asta:
That’s so true. And I think particularly when you think about something like a PhD in the department that I’m in, we take PhDs from physics, chemistry, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, all to come in to do a material science and PhD. So absolutely, and I think that’s true. You’ll find across the engineering schools, they’re going to want that students have a certain base level of knowledge when they come into a graduate course, but often they’re expecting they’re going to be developing that during their first year and that will give them the foundation. So I think that you’ll find particularly in a PhD program, that there’s a lot of interest in taking students outside of the direct major. And I think one of the important things to realize then is often it’s the research you’ve been involved with maybe as an undergraduate or the internships you’ve done that actually get as much attention in the application as the coursework that you’ve done. And so have you been successful in research or have you been on a project that involved teamwork and been able to see it through? Those are the kinds of things that in graduate school we would be looking for in applications. And so it’s not necessarily just tied to what courses you take.

Laura Vogt:
And I think I would be remiss if we didn’t talk a little bit more about the faculty and the role that they play in student success here, because not just in the classroom. So what’s the best way for a student to reach out to faculty, whether they’re trying to learn more about their major or they’re looking at grad school or job prospects?

Mark Asta:
It’s a great question, and I think that faculty at Berkeley are busy because they’re super successful people and they have just really exciting research programs. Oftentimes they’re doing service for their community and their profession, so that’s true. They can be sometimes hard to reach, but I think one has to be persistent. I would have to say some of the best discussions I’ve had with students have been in the hallways outside the classroom right after a lecture, come up to faculty, don’t be shy. Start those conversations and then they can follow up through email, they can follow up through other meetings and office hours and things like that. I’m always shocked when I teach a course, I maybe have 150 people in the class. I get six people coming to my office hours. I think you got me as a completely captive audience for an hour here and nobody’s coming. And so take advantage of those opportunities. Faculty usually love to talk about their research about the major, about their profession. Don’t be shy in getting them talking.

Laura Vogt:
And do you have any overall tips for students that aren’t sure that they’re in the right major?

Mark Asta:
Yeah, I think it’s always good to question, am I in the right major? Do I feel passionate about the classes I’m taking? I would say the one thing is try not to make those decisions just based on the lower division classes. When you get in the upper division and really understand what the major is about. And if you’re just not seeing that that’s really resonating with your interests and what you want to do and things, then I think it’s a good thing. It’s always good to question, am I in the right place? But sometimes it is a small tweak rather than just a change in major. There are minors, there are joint majors, there are electives that have chosen properly, might give you a particular emphasis within your major that you didn’t really even know existed, and that can be really fun and something that you’re excited about.
So yeah, I think it’s always good to question it, but the solutions don’t always have to be as drastic as completely changing majors. Sometimes it can be optimizing within a major. And there’s probably usually a reason why the major was chosen at the beginning. So there was something that interested them to be in that major. And so, sometimes it may just be that they’re not finding it within the major, and that may be because maybe the electives and things they’re choosing are not optimized with their interests. And so that’s where talking to the faculty advisors, most students will have a faculty advisor assigned to them. Their ESS advisors may know good people they can talk to. So again, try to be resourceful and really talk to people and try to get better background on what the options are.

Laura Vogt:
Is there anything that we haven’t talked about today that you would like to add?

Mark Asta:
Well, I do think coming back to E92, I think it’s a really great resource. You can take it or you can audit it. I do have students that audit it. I think it’s just a really nice overview of all the majors in the College of Engineering and the career paths that they’ve enabled. So even if you’re not an undeclared student, but you want to take it, we welcome folks to take that class. The lectures are recorded, so if you miss a lecture, you can still see it, but they are by agreement with the speakers, we don’t make the lectures available to those not enrolled in the class either as an auditor or actually for credit. So yeah, I just want to put in another plug for that. I think it’s a really nice resource and I think students who do engage with it, we’ll get a lot out it.

Laura Vogt:
And I’ll make sure I have the links to the course catalog description and numbers for this semester, so it’ll be easy to find.

Mark Asta:
Great.

Laura Vogt:
So thank you so much again for being here today and taking part in this and giving us your feedback and thoughts about choosing majors and how to discover more.

Mark Asta:
My pleasure.

Laura Vogt:
I want to make sure that students know there are events in engineering that address learning more about majors. One of them larger ones is from our engineering student services peer advisors, and it’s called the Major Madness Fair. That usually happens in November. So make sure you check your ESS newsletter for information about that.

You can also speak with students in each of the majors at that event, and you’ll find out about their curriculum and their student organizations, like Mark was talking about earlier. A lot of the departments have their major specific student organizations.

And again, check the newsletter. Or you could also check find out information about the event on engineering.berkeley.edu/ESSevents, and first year students that want to change their major. You have to complete at least a minimum of one semester in the College of Engineering before you can switch. So make an appointment with your engineering student advisor, but not until you’re in your first semester and they’ll be able to help you with schedule planning in a way that makes switching possible.

Thank you all for tuning in today to The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. We’ll be back next week with more information and resources for your time here at Berkeley.