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This Mentor feature provides profiles of now-famous people who changed their undergraduate majors, graduated, and went on to become successful in their professions.
If you know of a famous college graduate who changed majors and became successful, please submit a brief profile of that person for possible publication in The Mentor.
Dave Brubeck, jazz musician
- College: College of the Pacific
- First major: Veterinary Medicine
- Changed to: Music
- Quote: “I'm beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.”
- Interesting fact: Had the first integrated Army band in World War II
Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring (1962)
- College: Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University)
- First major: English
- Changed to: Biology (zoology)
- Quote: “Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”
- Interesting fact: Testified before Congress in 1963 calling for new governmental policies to protect the environment
George Washington Carver, agricultural scientist
- College: Iowa State
- First major: Art
- Changed to: Agriculture
- Quote: “Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.”
- Interesting fact: Developed over 300 different uses for the peanut
Jeff Gaspin, President and COO, Universal Television Group
- College: SUNY Binghamton
- First major: Pre-med
- Changed to: Organizational Psychology
- Quote: “Most of the kids in my neighborhood were going to be doctors or lawyers, so I enrolled in pre-med . . . . But when it was time to take the Medical College Admission Test, I walked into the test center and walked right back out. I really had no interest in being a doctor.” (New York Times, January 6, 2008)
- Interesting fact: Helped create “Dateline NBC”
Barbara Kingsolver, author, The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
- College: DePauw University
- First major: Music (classical piano)
- Changed to: Biology
- Quote: “Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.”
- Interesting fact: Held jobs as an archaeologist, copy editor, x-ray technician, housecleaner, and medical document translator
John Forbes Nash, Jr., mathematics researcher
- College: Carnegie Institute of Technology (a predecessor to Carnegie Mellon University)
- First major: Engineering
- Changed to: Chemistry, then mathematics
- Quote: “The mathematics faculty were encouraging me to shift into mathematics as my major and explaining to me that it was not almost impossible to make a good career in America as a mathematician.”
- Interesting fact: Nobel prize winner in economics and subject of the book and film, A Beautiful Mind
Ellen Ochoa, first Hispanic female astronaut
- College: San Diego State University
- First major: Journalism
- Changed to: Physics
- Quote: “I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out.”
- Interesting fact: Is a classical flautist
Rod Serling, screenwriter and television producer (The Twilight Zone)
- College: Antioch College
- First major: Physical Education
- Changed to: Language and Literature
- Quote: “There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.”
- Interesting fact: Was wounded while serving as a U.S. paratrooper in World War II
The Mentor is published by Penn State's Division of Undergraduate Studies
Available online at www.psu.edu/dus/mentor/
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