Student's Connectedness to Nature in Relation to Academic Major and Learning Style

The purpose of this research is to explore the relation between students’ connectedness to nature, academic major type and learning style. This study categorized student’s academic major into whether it was oriented toward business/advertising or natural resources/agriculture. Understanding students’ relationship with nature is important in a world that faces many environmental challenges. Studying academic major type and learning style provides references for chosen career paths and how students learn most efficiently. By running correlational analyses of these variables, more is understood about how connectedness to nature plays a role in students’ academic choices and learning preferences. Results showed a significant correlation between students’ score on the Nature Relatedness Scale and Academic Major Type. In particular, students orientated toward natural resources and agriculture displayed significantly higher scores on the Nature Relatedness Scale than those orientated toward business and advertising. This suggests that connectedness to nature is an indicator of how students assemble within the university. Future studies should look more thoroughly at connectedness to nature on the broad spectrum of academic majors.