Charles Ross, a professor of English at Purdue U., discusses Shakespeare'southward <em>Julius Caesar</em> with his class as part of the Transformative Texts course sequence. Built around classic works, the courses are designed to engage undergraduates in ways that a traditional composition class typically does not.

Clay Lomneth for The Chronicle

Charles Ross, a professor of English at Purdue U., discusses Shakespeare's Julius Caesar with his class as role of the Transformative Texts course sequence. Built effectually classic works, the courses are designed to engage undergraduates in ways that a traditional limerick class typically does not.

Across the land, humanities majors have plummeted. Since 2011, history has seen a 33-percent drop in majors. English language has seen a longer and more drastic decline, while languages, philosophy, and religion have also been hit hard since the 2008 recession.

Humanities departments have also struggled to fill introductory and intermediate courses. According to surveys by the American Historical Association, overall enrollments in history courses declined by nearly 8 percent from 2013-14 to 2016-17.

"The financial crash was the tipping bespeak for a lot of different departments in the humanities because it persuaded parents besides equally students that a humanities degree didn't guarantee a financial time to come and information technology was a kind of luxury," said Gary Taylor, chair of the English department at Florida State University. "Of course that's not true, that humanities degrees don't get you a job. But it's a perception. And perceptions drive decisions that people brand."

Many humanities professors tin sympathise the attraction of fields similar data scientific discipline and engineering. Digital skills are, after all, required in many jobs, and starting salaries in these fields are often strong.

That's not true, that humanities degrees don't get you a task. But it's a perception. And perceptions bulldoze decisions that people make.

Just this existential crisis has forced humanities departments to look both outward and in. Had they, in fact, kept their courses relevant? Had they been helping their students prepare for careers? Had they finer conveyed the value of the humanities to a generation uncertain of its future? Many say no.

"In history and humanities in general, nosotros take done a really crap job of telling our story over the last 10 years," said Heather Gumbert, an acquaintance professor of history at Virginia Tech.

Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Clan, said there's a broad shift going on in history as a result of those external pressures. "It's departments saying, 'What are students interested in? OK, let's teach that.' It's also walking across campus and talking to colleagues and saying, 'What kinds of history courses brand amend engineers?'"

At that place are some signs that those efforts may be working. Co-ordinate to the most recent AHA survey, history course enrollments have stabilized.

Several departments at colleges across the nation are trying to lure more students back to the humanities. Here's how they're doing it.

The Liberal-Arts Document

Purdue University has e'er been a STEM-oriented campus. But interest in the humanities has declined and then precipitously in recent years that its College of Liberal Arts faced a crisis. From 2011 to 2015, the college saw a 37-per centum drop in majors. English language had 402 majors in 2011. At present it has 263. History dropped from 150 majors to fourscore.

The share of undergraduates taking humanities courses has as well cratered. In 2016 only 10 percentage of graduating Purdue students had taken a class in literature, and just seven percent had taken American history.

"It felt like a ball rolling off the table," said David Reingold, dean of the college. "If y'all projected this out, we would have no students by 2025."

Ane goal has been to persuade more Stem-focused students to take classes in the humanities and social sciences. To that end, the college created a 15-credit-hour certificate program called Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts. It begins with a ii-semester course sequence, known as Transformative Texts, that develops students' communication and data-literacy skills. That is followed by academic work in i of five tracks: science, the environment, wellness care, management, or conflict resolution.

The Transformative Texts series, said Melinda Zook, a history professor and Cornerstone's founding director, is different from the traditional rhetoric and limerick courses, typically taught by graduate students, that all students take through their general-didactics requirements. For one, the courses are taught past some of the college's best teachers in a multifariousness of disciplines, including anthropology, history, philosophy, political scientific discipline, and folklore. And because they are built around classic works, the courses are designed to engage undergraduates in ways that a traditional limerick class typically does not.

Students might read T.Due south. Eliot's "The Honey Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and discuss social feet. Or they may swoop into Sir Thomas More's Utopia and fence the notion of the perfect customs. That strategy has proved to exist a bridge to students who might not unremarkably take a literature form.

"All college students love to talk well-nigh stress, anxiety, friendship, career choices, what makes me happy, or what makes my parents happy," said Zook. "All the great books are a reflection on the self. Those conversations become over really well with these students."

If y'all projected this out, we would have no students by 2025.

When the Transformative Texts courses were rolled out, in the fall of 2018, about 1,000 students enrolled and the wait list was long. This twelvemonth, Purdue doubled the number of sections. Now, about ane,800 students — or about i-quarter of the freshman grade — are enrolled.

The courses have also appealed to kinesthesia members in the higher, one-third of whom are teaching a Transformative Texts course. While they're non designed as pipelines to a major, Zook said she's aware of the power a well-designed introductory class can take on an 18-year-old. "You lot go in at that place with these 30 freshmen, and y'all attract them to literature or philosophy, and you lot tell them why you lot teach this," she said. "Some students major by professor."

She as well likes the claiming of education a class in which there may be one liberal-arts major and the rest are from Stem fields. "You would never accept had them in other classes," she said. "I don't do compare and contrast. I do: Pitch me a video game based on Dante's Inferno."

The college has worked with deans and department chairs across the campus to bear witness them the value of the program. Some bought in immediately, noting that employers have long complained that many Stalk graduates enter the work forcefulness without the power to write or speak effectively. "Our large push button is that this will tell employers you lot have these advice skills," said Zook. "You're not merely an engineer; you're an engineer who can call back on his or her anxiety, who tin articulate a vision."

Some upper-level courses that consummate the certificate were already on the books, only some have been especially designed for it. Students in the management track, for example, tin can have a course called "Literature, Money, and Markets," "orienting the reader every bit to how classics from Chaucer to Dickens are engaged in the concern of thinking near business."

Melinda Zook is a history professor and the director of the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts program at Purdue U. One goal of Cornerstone has been to persuade more STEM-focused students to take classes in the humanities and social sciences.

Clay Lomneth for The Chronicle

Melinda Zook is a history professor and the director of the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts program at Purdue U. One goal of Cornerstone has been to persuade more STEM-focused students to take classes in the humanities and social sciences.

Modernizing the Major

Florida State University's English department used to have simply two majors: creative writing every bit well as literature, media, and culture.

In 2009 it added a third: editing, writing, and media. At the time, the reason was adequately practical. The English section had recently developed a graduate concentration in the history of text technologies, said Taylor, the department chair, and wanted to deploy that faculty expertise more broadly. It also wanted to create a major that pulled together the department's strengths in rhetoric, artistic writing, and literature.

Editing, writing, and media has proved so popular that professors are struggling to keep upwardly with demand. The number of majors, 662, is more than than the other two majors combined. "The bug we have had," said Taylor, "while I've heard tragic stories of English language departments falling apart, have been the problems of unanticipated success."

Taylor attributes the major's popularity, in part, to the fact that information technology gives students valuable skills while putting their experiences in context. And so, for example, all students are required to have courses in writing and editing, for both print and online, likewise as courses that teach them most the history of texts and the technologies that produced them. All texts are dependent on technologies, Taylor said, whether you're talking nearly cave paintings, Shakespearean dramas, or internet memes.

The major also includes an internship, allowing students to envision their professional futures. Some have worked at book publishers. Others have interned at literary magazines, media-strategy firms, or museums.

"Nosotros take added offerings that connect literature and civilization to the 21st-century creative economy," said Taylor. "And that has proven to be amazingly attractive to undergraduates who are still interested in the things that have e'er attracted people to English departments."

Rethinking Gateway Courses

Turning effectually the decline in humanities majors has been a tough nut to cleft for most institutions. Drawing more students into history or English or philosophy classes seems more doable. A number of universities are revamping introductory and intermediate-level courses every bit a fashion to lure more students.

At Virginia Tech, the history department watched the number of credit hours taken in the section drop from xiv,000 to eight,700 in the span of five years, bottoming out in 2016. Only since and so it has seen its enrollments steadily climb — surpassing 14,000 credit hours last autumn.

Gumbert, an acquaintance professor of history and one-time associate chair, said her department'south faculty members began experimenting with grade redesign post-obit a restructuring of the major and the introduction of a new full general-pedagogy program. "I tried to develop a comprehensive plan," she said. "Simply information technology was sort of let'southward endeavor this and permit's effort that."

They began by rebalancing their offerings. The section was height-heavy, said Gumbert, offering lots of upperclass courses but non plenty lower-level ones. So a number of higher-level courses were redesigned every bit introductory or intermediate ones, proving popular with students from across the campus. An upper-level history-of-engineering class, for case, hardly drew any students iii years ago. The introductory version is now consistently full. The aforementioned is true of a sequence of courses in African American history.

Gumbert also encouraged her colleagues to create courses designed with broad entreatment. She adult 1 herself on the Common cold State of war. Others created courses on classics in the modern world, and on war and medicine. A couple of faculty members are now at work designing large survey courses, including one on America in the 1960s and another on the history of night.

Gumbert made certain that all courses are presented with a clear and compelling description. A course on murder in American history, for example, is described as a study of how society's definitions and views of killing take changed over the centuries, covering such topics as ballgame, lynching, and vigilante justice. Gumbert besides showed up at a majors fair to talk to students about leap classes. And she met with advisers in other disciplines to tell them about electives their students might like.

Those gateway courses stimulate students' interest in the discipline, Gumbert said. "My philosophy is that if we can get people into our classes, they will stay, if not for a major or a modest, then for at least a few more classes."

Connecting to Full general Educational activity

When the Academy of Kentucky restructured its general-education program a few years ago, the English section was hit hard. The revamp took a number of writing courses abroad from English language and put them in a new department. And merely a couple of the remaining courses met the new gen-ed requirements. As a result, enrollments in the section plummeted.

The English language department was able to engineer a turnaround through a strategy of developing new courses tied to general teaching. A new literature and citizenship course, for example, met a U.S. civics requirement. A new artistic-writing class met one on creativity.

Peter Kalliney, so associate chair of the department, got professors to buy into the revamp past encouraging them to create courses on topics that interested them. And he asked everyone in the department to teach a full general-education course, ensuring that students would be exposed to the more experienced professors in the department. Courses in topics such as mythology, the Bible, scientific discipline fiction, and creative writing have proved popular with students.

Jonathan Allison, the current department chair, said that this twelvemonth the department is besides contributing to a new series of courses offered across the campus, called the freshman discovery seminar, which is a small grade paired with a big lecture grade. The English section offers, for example, a seminar on literature and vampires, which is paired with a large lecture on European folklore. While enrollments in mid- and upper-level courses are however suffering because of declines in the major, Allison said, course enrollments in the department remain potent.

The Kitchen-Sink Approach

Some colleges are trying a host of things to bring more than students into their departments, such equally revamping introductory courses, creating new minors for students who don't want to commit to a full major, and tying the humanities more explicitly to sure careers.

This fall Harvard University'southward history section unveiled 16 new or revised gateway, or foundations, courses designed to draw more students, particularly freshmen, into the department. The courses accept names like "The New Science of the Human Past" and "The Making of the Modern Center East." They are centered on large questions, such as "What happened in the 20th century to make the U.S. the well-nigh powerful — and feared — country in the world?"

They also promise accessibility: No prerequisites are needed, and no historical-analysis skills are assumed. They will teach all that, including how to use primary-source material and make a historical argument.

Even at Harvard, where the diploma itself would seem to guarantee a relatively shine transition into the working world, professors can feel students' feet. It'due south not that students don't desire to ask the big and enduring questions nigh human being existence, professors say. It's that they're afraid that if they put all of their eggs in one basket, they won't be able to state a task.

To that finish, the department has created a series of clusters, or groups of courses, to appeal to students who want to report history but too want to see a clear path to a career. The clusters embrace police force, business, journalism, government, activism, and the environment. A student interested in environmental problems tin take a serial of courses relevant to that career, such as ane on the history of free energy, while a business organization major could study, amidst other things, the history of women in economic life.

"The Career Cluster idea is almost trying to get those students who are insecure about concentrating in history to empathise that if they make that selection, nosotros are going to provide a skill set beyond higher," said Lisa McGirr, director of undergraduate studies. "They might accept a honey for history, simply they're sort of worried virtually what their parents' responses volition exist. They've said explicitly, 'Wow, this is so not bad because one of my concerns is my parents saying, What are you going to do with that caste?'"

Beth McMurtrie writes virtually engineering's influence on education and the future of learning. Follow her on Twitter @bethmcmurtrie, or email her at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.