Why I Changed Majors During My Junior Year

All throughout high school, I had the same recurring thought: “I’ve spent years learning all of this algebra and calculus, but how can I use it in my everyday life?” I know a lot of my peers asked themselves the same question. As much as I enjoyed my math classes growing up, I wish I had learned more about the real-world applications of the course material, specifically how it could be used in a job setting. It was not until the fall of my junior year at UConn that I started to piece it all together in my Introduction to Operations Management course (OPIM 3104).

I was very fortunate that my high school offered a multitude of business elective courses, which introduced me to Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Microeconomics at an early age. My high school also participated in DECA, an international business case competition organization where students have the opportunity to compete at district, state, and international levels in mock business situations. I competed in one of the marketing categories of the competition for two years, loving the exposure to the marketing field and the opportunity to meet real industry professionals judging the competitions. This experience led me to apply to the School of Business at UConn, and I started as a “business undecided” major my freshman year, still unsure which area of business would suit me best. With UConn’s business students completing most of their General Education requirements during the first few semesters, I did not have the opportunity to take high-level business classes until my junior year. Feeling the pressure of my peers in the business school having already declared their major and seeming to have very clear career goals in mind, I declared Marketing as my major at the beginning of my sophomore year, knowing that I had a strong interest in the field from my exposure with DECA. I had high hopes of landing a marketing internship that following summer, but my application failed to stand out against other candidates,’ with my lack of technical skills or marketing work experience. I was disappointed, but it opened my eyes to the fact that I would need to build some skills before I would catch recruiters’ interest. I still wanted to gain some marketing experience that summer, so I volunteered part-time for my hometown church as the Communications and Marketing Intern, running the social media, creating graphics for the website, tracking the analytics behind the online service videos, and redesigning the electronic newsletter. I realized then that although I did enjoy the content creation part of the job, it was the data behind the promotions that really interested me. I was eager to find ways to increase our social media views and interactions, and I spent time researching ways to improve the marketing efforts of small churches. 

Fall came, and most of the world was still in a tight lockdown because of the pandemic. The UConn Career Center offices weren’t open in person at the time, and my role as Administrative Services Intern faded. However, I was fortunate to be offered the opportunity to serve as the center’s Content Marketing Intern, and I could complete all of my projects virtually. I spent most of my work hours creating graphics and captions for social media, drafting emails, and writing blog posts for the website. Again, I found the content creation interesting, but I was really motivated to find the “holes” in our work and discover how we could increase student engagement and reach broader audiences with our content. 

During that same semester, I took my second required operation and information management course, OPIM 310, Introduction to Operations Management. Even though the class was taught asynchronously online, it quickly became my favorite course that I had taken at UConn. My professor, Miao Bai, related all of the course content to real-life business situations, which not only made the material easier to understand, it also fascinated me. We learned about the evolution of businesses creating more efficient processes, including Six Sigma, the Toyota Production System model, and Just-In-Time and lean manufacturing. The concept that intrigued me the most, however, was linear programming. This is a mathematical technique used by many organizations to maximize or minimize a linear function of variables, such as output or cost. One example of this technique that Professor Bao introduced to the class was United Parcel Service’s (UPS) creation of an algorithm that produces the most efficient route to all parcel stops in each truck driver’s area. It allows UPS as a company to save a multitude of time, money, and resources over the years and increases profit margin and productivity. With this newfound fascination with business operations, I decided it was time to make a change.

I reached out to Professor Bai and set up a virtual meeting so that we could discuss the Operations Information Management department and talk more about the Management Information Systems major. Professor Bai offered great insight on career opportunities that can stem from an information systems background, but he referred me to the head of the OPIM department, Jonathan Moore, for more information about the MIS major and the classes I would be taking if I switched from marketing to MIS. 

I explained my interest in switching from marketing to MIS and Professor Moore was extremely encouraging and reinforced my decision by explaining that I was the 5th female marketing major that semester to come to him wanting to switch to MIS. He also spoke about all of the technical skills, including different database and software systems, that I would acquire by taking the OPIM classes, and that they would be invaluable during my search for internships and full-time jobs. The one thing I was hesitant about before switching majors was the coding classes that I would be required to take. I had no prior coding experience or knowledge, and I was nervous that the other MIS students would have years of coding experience under their belts and I would be behind the curve. When I met with Jonathan Moore, he assured me that the majority of MIS students do not have prior programming experience and that the coding classes start from the very basics of each language and do not assume any prior coding knowledge. 

Feeling confident in my decision to switch majors, I sent in the request that same day I spoke with Jonathan Moore and I haven’t looked back since. I have taken a wide range of courses since that fall semester, including project management, supply chain management, network design, and application, and have learned the basics of SQL and C# programming languages. I love that the MIS major offers a wide range of classes for the different interests of MIS students, from learning how to develop video games to creating data visualizations in Tableau. MIS majors have a lot of freedom when it comes to the classes they must take, with several required OPIM classes, and then many electives within the department to choose from. The OPIM department also offers the “Innovate Lab” to all business majors, with hands-on technology such as Virtual Reality devices to learn and experiment with new and interesting technologies that may not be touched upon in the OPIM courses.  

By Chloe Sainsbury
Chloe Sainsbury