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institutional data, 10 an average of 19.7% switched out of engineering after the first year
for the years 1996-2001; another 9.7% switched out after the second year for the years
1996-2000; and only 3.8% and 2.1% switched out during the junior and senior years,
respectively. As a result, the junior and senior classes are somewhat smaller than the
freshman and sophomore classes, in each cohort. Also, the 1997 cohort (seniors at the
time of the survey) was smaller to begin with (n=77) than the 1998, 1999 and 2000
cohorts (beginning with 107, 115 and 117 respectively); on the other hand, few students
transfer into the program. As we will show below, at any given level, surprisingly fewer
women have switched out of engineering than males: totaling the cohorts from 1996-
2001, 31.4% of the males who started out in engineering switched out, compared to 25%
of the females who started out in engineering. This contributes to a slightly higher
proportion of females in the senior cohort than in earlier years.
Major
The Rowan program has four major areas of study: chemical engineering, civil and
environmental engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical
engineering. 11 About a third of the students are electrical/computing engineering majors,
a quarter mechanical engineering majors, a fifth of the students are chemical engineering
majors, and a fifth civil and environmental engineering majors (Table 1D-3). The general
major was only available for first-year students who had not decided on their major yet.
10 Made available to the principal investigator by Institutional Research at Rowan.
11 The environmental emphasis was added to the civil engineering major two years after the program started, and the
computer engineering emphasis was added to the electrical engineering major three years after the program started.
(Adding these emphases allowed for more specialization within the major and was made possible by additional faculty
and curriculum development.) For the first four years of the program, students were allowed to enter as “general”
engineering majors and guided to select one of the other four majors during their sophomore year and preferably before
its start. However, this general major was being phased out in the academic year 2001-2 and completely eliminated
beginning Fall 2002.
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