NIU Counseling and Student Development is working to decrease the number of undecided majors by hosting “Finding the Future Career Workshops.”

The workshops are held from 12:30 to 2 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays and from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Thursdays until April 13. Advanced registration is required.

“The workshop is an excellent chance to take a career test to understand how your interests fit into the world of work,” said Brian J. Pillsbury, coordinator of career services at the Counseling and Student Development Center.

Many people come to college without knowing their major, Pillsbury said, and the workshops will make career decisions easier.

At the workshops, students will learn about academic options, including learning about how to navigate the course catalog. They also will learn about resources for learning about careers.

Pillsbury said they help people from all grade levels, mostly freshmen and sophomores, but he said they see seniors if they have already chosen a major but don’t know what to do with it.

The number of undecided majors at NIU increases every year. In 2000, there were 2,047 undecided majors. In 2002, there were 2,318, with the majority in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Pillsbury said the reason for increases in undecided majors is that the job market is so unstable that students change majors out of frustration. Many recent high school graduates also declare an undecided major because they don’t know what they want to do.

“If you are here and don’t know what you are going to major in, and you don’t have much direction, it’s a lot easier to think, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be here,’” Pillsbury said. “We can help out to find that direction, and then they likely stay here once they know what their direction is.”

Students will take the Strong Interest Inventory, a career test, during the workshop. Pillsbury said students usually come out with several strong possibilities, and they know how to investigate those possibilities a lot more.

“There is nothing wrong with majoring in art and going into business because you can use your artistic abilities for different jobs within business,” Pillsbury said.