UA’s Apparel Studies Program Enjoys Surge in Popularity

Sarah Nagashima wanted to do two things at college: compete in gymnastics and study fashion.

At the University of Arkansas, Nagashima found both – a gymnastics team that made its first Super Six appearance last spring, and an apparel studies program that’s enjoyed a 329 percent increase in enrollment since 1998.

Nagashima, a senior, even plans to bring the two together in April. While completing a required summer internship, Nagashima designed a prototype leotard the Razorbacks plan to wear should they advance to NCAA competition in April.

Nagashima’s is not the only success story for the UA’s apparel studies program, which consists of five faculty members and a handful of labs and classrooms tucked into a building wedged between the campus library and its law school. The program had just 49 full-time equivalent students in 1998, but boasts 210 this semester.

By comparison, students majoring in industrial engineering dropped 49 percent from 1998 to 2008, and those majoring in information systems fell 57 percent during the same period.

“We have grown,” apparels studies professor Laurie Apple said, “but we have not recruited. Most of it is word of mouth.

“I would love to be that university that everybody thinks of first when they think of fashion.”

Part of the program’s enrollment boom, professor Lona Robertson said, has been due to the proliferation of companies like Gap and Old Navy. Such companies are considered private-label companies because they handle the conception of products, the selling of products, and everything in between those two processes.

Likewise, the UA’s apparel studies program is meant to provide students an understanding of the fashion industry as a whole rather than allowing them a more narrow focus.

“We don’t separate out a design concentration and a merchandising concentration,” Apple said. “When students graduate they have a real good feeling for the entire industry.

“If they want to go into buying, that’s fine, but they know product development and merchandising, too.”

Or, as professor Kathy Smith said with a laugh, students ultimately finish the program “more well-rounded than they’d like to be.”

Employers have taken note. Current students interned last summer at the likes of Nordstrom and Seventeen magazine, while UA graduates work at a wide range of companies such as Dillard’s, Wal-Mart and Gucci.

“They have an opportunity to find where their strengths lie,” Robertson said.

Starting salaries have grown, too. While Smith said a typical entry-level position might have paid $28,000 a year in 1998, today’s graduates regularly command annual starting salaries from $35,000 to $45,000.

The program’s success also has resulted in gifts that should further its popularity and educational capabilities. Lectra provided $3 million worth of computer software in August, and the UA has received similar gifts from companies like Gerber Technology and Visual Retailing.

Add class sizes of about 25 students and professors who also serve as advisers, and it’s easy to see why apparel studies has become an increasingly attractive program.

“It’s reassuring to know you’re going to leave here knowing more than you ever thought you would,” Nagashima said.