Psychology minor eliminated

Rising enrollment and limited funds restricted the courses available.

By Amanda Wysocki

Published March 2, 2009

Journalism student Lindsay Bukiet was only one class away from completing her minor in psychology.

But the department has announced that students hoping to minor in psychology next fall will not be able to take the upper-division coursework necessary to do so.

"I'm in the second semester of my junior year, so trying to major in psychology at this point wouldn't be worth it," Bukiet said. "The minor was more for my personal interest, but it still would have been nice to receive since I have taken the proper coursework."

Bukiet planned to supplement her strategic communications major and business minor with another minor in psychology.

"I enrolled in psychology classes at Mizzou because I was interested in the subject and stumbled upon the idea of pursuing a minor," Bukiet said. "The timing in all this is irritating, but it doesn't have a huge effect on my career plan."

With high levels of enrollment and increasing numbers of psychology majors, courses are filling up with majors in early enrollment.

The psychology department is one of the largest on campus, professor David McDonald said. There are more than 1,100 undergraduate majors.

"It's unfortunate, but the department really has very little choice," McDonald said. "The number of teaching faculty has actually changed very little in recent years."

Psychology professor Ines Segert said the elimination of the minor will have a slightly negative impact on the students.

"Eliminating the diversity of students in the upper-level classrooms will narrow the viewpoints," Segert said.

Since most departments restrict upper-level courses to majors only during the initial registration period, the 3000- and 4000-level classes will already be filled by the time early enrollment ends, Psychology Undergraduate Studies Director Alan Strathman said.

"It feels like, in order to serve minors, we have to sacrifice seats for majors," Strathman said. "Right now, our effort is really trying to serve our majors as well as we can."

The department also does not know how many students plan to minor in psychology because they do not complete any paperwork until they are ready to graduate, Strathman said.

"All we're doing is estimating how many people there are," Strathman said. "Maybe one thing we need to do is to change the paperwork requirements so that students have to complete some paperwork before they take their upper-division classes."

Strathman said no one in the psychology department wants to get rid of the option to minor, but the economic situation makes it difficult to come up with funds to offer more classes.

"We're hoping to try and find some funding so that we can offer more classes in the fall," Strathman said. "If that were possible, we would certainly do that."

The minor might not be gone forever, Strathman said. They would like to bring back the option once they get the funds to offer more classes.

"I don't want anyone to think we are against minors," Strathman said.

McDonald does not think this will very seriously impact the number of psychology majors and affect any change in enrollment.

"The psychology minor is one of those 'nice if you can do it' options and a really good idea for many students," McDonald said. "We just can't be all things to all students."