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Themes
The following themes came up by students during their collective interview.
Theme 4: Actual classes vs. imagined prestige of sciences
As a whole, not many of the interviews went into depth regarding this particular theme. Group 2 spoke about Mount Holyoke’s impressive science complex as an indication that the sciences at Mount Holyoke were taken very seriously, but the actual relationship between these two ideas seemed to focus more largely on their disappointments with the specifics of class structure instead of a larger picture of the Mount Holyoke science community. Group 1 did not have any part of their interview pertaining to this particular theme. The interviewees of Group 3 all agreed that Mount Holyoke had a great science department, several of them even claiming to have bragged about it. At the same time, these same interviewees decided to stop taking biology classes at Mount Holyoke altogether because they were put off by the way the classes were taught. Perhaps they were interested in owning the prestige of the sciences at Mount Holyoke as part of the school’s overall reputation but did not see the contradiction in their statements about the science department versus their actual experiences with the classes.
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