Ever since she bought her first sewing kit in eighth grade, Nathalia Gomez had one question: how can she turn fashion design into her career? As a freshman in textiles and apparel, she strives for that dream. Yet after major changes to the degree track, she is reconsidering her career.

In a town hall meeting Tuesday, textiles and apparel professors announced the degree plan will be changed to better equip students for the industry. Program professors and directors said the degree’s three specialization tracks each consist of five classes, or courses meant to gear students toward a specific specialized skill. Starting with the 2026 catalog, the tracks will be reduced to three or four classes, and will also push more technological and collaborative aspects to help students be better prepared for the industry after graduation.

The presenters said the College of Natural Sciences is implementing these changes for multiple reasons, including because of surveys from alumni who said they wished they had learned more business skills.

Some students criticized the changes, saying they limit the more creative aspects of the major. Gomez said she plans to switch majors to biochemistry because of the changes.

“I’m just really hesitant to continue in the degree, because I’m going to pursue (biochemistry) as my double major, and I’m looking at the (textile and apparel) classes, like is this worth it?” Gomez said. “I was so ready for the fight for design, staying up late, doing all that stuff to get myself out there.”

Although current students can stay in the original textiles and apparel tracks they had signed up for, their classes will still shift to a new curriculum with more business and technology skills.

Textiles and apparel upperclassmen are required to take a capstone collection course where they create and show off four outfits. Students are currently allowed to create these pieces in whatever style they want. With the new changes, they will have to design these outfits in a “ready to wear” or conventional style.

Jennifer Wilson, director for textiles and apparel, said these changes in the degree are not meant to diminish student creativity, but rather help them develop marketable skills to use in their career.

“We are not trying to take away anybody’s creativity, but we are trying to prepare them for industry jobs and keep them competitive with what other programs are doing at other universities,” Wilson said. “If other universities are all training their students a certain way, and ours are missing that, in the end, it won’t be beneficial.”

Although students understood where the changes came from, many of them expressed disagreement. They said they believe these changes would take away creative aspects of the degree track in exchange for training more marketable skills, which they said strayed away from why they had originally joined the major.

“Most of us came to UT with the assumption that at the end of our career, we do our capstone collection, as well as have several other classes that are now being either compressed or cut,” said Alex Secord, a textile and apparel and Plan II junior. “A lot of the frustration for me and other people is that it feels like we are not getting what we signed up for in the first place, and now a lot of us are in (our) second or third year at UT.”