Ivan Panov, Staff Writer
On March 26, first-year and sophomore students were invited to Major Day in the Provost Dining Room at Curtis Hall. Denison’s diverse academic departments were present at this event.
For first-years, it was a chance to explore and learn about different majors and minors, get a better sense of what fits them, and ask questions. For sophomores, this is the day that they officially declare their major.
Anna Crum ‘28 attended and officially declared to double major in English and history. Crum shared that both of her majors do a lot from her perspective.
“When you’re reading, you get to really experience something else and understand larger human conditions, and history also gives you a lot of context and understanding for other people,” said Crum.
“I took Modern East Asian civilizations and Ancient East Asian civilizations with Professor Yang, and those were both really awesome classes because they were just parts of history I knew absolutely nothing about,” said Crum.
Additionally, Crum highlighted how she likes to get something completely new, and that in history, “you can go as deep or as shallow as you want, and you’re going to end up in cool places.”
A few professors shared their experiences participating in this event, as well as explanations of their field of teaching.
The interim chair of International Studies, Taku Suzuki, explained that international studies aims to understand world affairs from “interdisciplinary perspectives.”
“We may borrow from different areas of study, whether it’s anthropology or political science or economics, so that we can understand whatever you are interested in… in an in-depth, nuanced way,” Suzuki said. “It allows you to go back and forth between micro-scale everyday situations and interactions with large-scale, global-scale events and trends.”
Additionally, Ashwin Lall, the chair of computer science, was present at the event. Lall was part of the group that proposed the new machine learning and artificial intelligence minor, which will become an official option for students next semester.
“A lot of people don’t realize that AI has been around for more than 50 years. The term AI was invented in the 1950s by John McCarthy. So it’s a discipline that’s been around a really long time. It’s just it’s kind of really entered the public consciousness in the last couple of years. And it is changing how the world works,” Lall said.
He also highlighted that this discipline will help students understand how the technology actually works, as AI has “severely” disrupted many industries over the past few years. This would allow students to “actually create the technology,” rather than simply learning how to interact with it.
The machine learning and AI minor will not yet be offered as a major because it is considered interdisciplinary at Denison, and at most liberal arts colleges, it is a “subfield of computer science,” Lall said.
Lall also invited any interested students to take the introductory course for the minor, but noted that the course is “technically deep” and will require a lot of math and computer science expertise.
For students and faculty alike, Major Day provided an important opportunity to connect with different academic departments and learn more about the diverse areas of focus offered at Denison.