This question was tricky. The highest enrollments belong to required courses, so The Harbinger decided to search for the highest enrollment in a general elective course and define that as “popular.”

Boasting rights go to Philosophy 101: Critical Thinking, which had the highest enrollment in 2021. 

Philosophy professor Rebecca Scott, who teaches the critical thinking course, explained that the course helps students detect basic fallacies — failures in reasoning — in their own thinking as well as others’ thinking. 

The course’s emphasis on logic drew in freshman Ethan McClanahan. 

“I wanted to learn about philosophy — hopefully to get a feel for some of its schools of thought,” McClanahan said. “This class can be very useful since it teaches thinking skills and ways to identify arguments that can be valuable to our day-to-day life skills.” 

Student Casey Swiloski also found the thinking skills taught in the course applicable to everyday life and said it is good preparation for a future career.

“I chose this class because the whole critical thinking process can help tremendously in my major, which is business management, and I believe it’ll give me the communicating skills in order to run or work in that industry,” Swiloski said.

Scott explained that while the course provides students with a set of tools to guide their logical thinking, there’s no prescribed course content; rather, students are asked to apply critical thinking to a broad range of topics. 

“What I find so difficult about this class is it’s about everything and nothing at once,” Scott said.