As students develop communities around extracurriculars and House life, departments must come up with creative ways to establish camaraderie around shared academic interests.

At the end of reading period, nearly 40 undergraduates in red onesie pajamas assembled at a themed party to celebrate senior members of the group. The fete—“Pyrites of the Caribbean: At Semester’s End,” a geological play on the Disney movie franchise—was not an extracurricular event but rather the final meeting of the Geological Society, a club formed by concentrators in the earth and planetary sciences.

With just about 40 students, EPS is one of the College’s smaller concentrations and prides itself on its active community, said “Geo Society Empress” Alex S. Morgan ’14. But its approach to camaraderie is just one of many possible routes. From student-faculty dinners to common physical spaces to group problem solving sessions, each of Harvard’s 48 undergraduate concentrations has its own strategies to build community around shared academic interests.

Still, some students feel more affinity with fellow concentrators than others. And on a campus that is brimming with extracurriculars, social organizations, and the residential House system, concentration community is just one element of the student experience. While Harvard is known for its academics, factors such as concentration size, assignment type, and student and faculty initiative seem to have a large impact on whether a student feels a social connection to his or her concentration.

SIZING IT UP

Although concentration size does not necessarily correlate with concentration satisfaction—in 2012 senior exit surveys, small concentrations had both the highest and lowest ratings—students in smaller concentrations said they tend to be closer because they interact more often.

“You get to interact and work with a lot of the same kids and that definitely fosters relationships,” said Nicholas W. Galat ’13, one of just under 100 concentrators in statistics.

“I guess I feel like the department doesn’t actually do a ton, but I think it’s nice because it’s such a small department that you get to know the people really well,” said William D. Horton ’15, a music concentrator.

Music, with only 19 concentrators, had the lowest concentration satisfaction in 2012 surveys.

Conversely, for students in larger concentrations, their academic field tended to play a smaller role in their daily experience.

“Because Psychology is one of the larger concentrations, it can be challenging to create a more intimate community,” said Melissa A. Yetman, an undergraduate program coordinator in psychology. While the department holds several events, including Sophomore Welcome gatherings and student-faculty dinners, Yetman said they are not always well-attended because coordinating the schedules of so many students can be challenging.

Kevin L. Huang ’13, who concentrated in government and statistics, served as a government peer concentration counselor as part of the department’s efforts to improve advising. But given the varied specialties of concentrators and the vast size of the concentration, he said it was almost impossible to get to know many of his fellow concentrators.

“There are just too many people in the department, to the point where you inevitably end up with people who just don’t know each other,” Huang said.

FORMULAS FOR COMMUNITY

Still, sometimes even larger concentrations are able to develop a tight-knit community thanks to the nature of assignments—problem sets, group projects, and laboratory or research settings often bring students together.

Physics, for example, has a number of traditional events, from a weekly problem set solving night in Leverett Dining Hall that sees students scribbling solutions until late in the night to an annual picnic. The Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students serves as a network for students of physics from inside and outside the concentration.