Kinesiology is an impacted major at California State University Northridge, which sparked the Pierce College Counseling Office to offer a workshop on Friday March 18 in the Transfer Center.
There are seven impacted majors at CSUN, meaning they have more qualified applicants than there is space. Norine Fine, academic counselor, helped to organize the Kinesiology workshop.
“This is the first time we’ve done a kinesiology workshop and one of the reasons we decided to do this is because the kinesiology major at CSUN is now impacted,” Fine said.
Since it will be the first time that CSUN’s Kinesiology major is impacted, Pierce College counselors do not know what type of effect this change will bring to the students applications or what CSUN will be looking at for the program upcoming fall.
Counselors said that when a major is impacted the selection criteria becomes more rigorous. Selection criteria includes GPA and the completion of the student’s major preparation courses, according to Fine.
The purpose of the workshop was to better inform students on what core classes they must take and internships they can participate in to be a noticeably contender.
“We wanted to do this workshop to educate students interested in kinesiology and what they need to do to really help themselves to be a more competitive applicant for CSUN and other campuses as well,” Fine said.
Fine said in the past she would occasionally have a student be interested in Kinesiology and it was a rare major, but it has become more popular.
“Most of the campuses do have impaction in their kinesiology programs and it has really become a very popular program,” Fine said. “I think it’s partly because Kinesiology, as opposed to the biology major, has a lot of attraction to somebody that is not interested in doing all the pre-med type of coursework.”
Elvin Garcia, Kinesiology major, attended the workshop and was satisfied with the information provided about the types of careers he could pursue.
“The slides gave a lot of descriptive information of each field and that was helpful,” Garcia said.
Alejandra Morales considered kinesiology two years ago but was surprised there weren’t many workshops available. Morales found the workshop helpful and thinks it could benefit students with organizing their classes, especially for kinesiology because it’s like a science major having to take chemistry, biology and physiology.
“I think it helps people with organizing their classes and which classes you have to take each semester and for time managing too,” Morales said.
“These workshops help students be more prepared and I do think attending can benefit them,” Fine said.
