November 2010 newsletter
share this pageEnrollment at Minnesota private colleges stable
Higher education at private institutions remains a popular option for students in Minnesota. In fall 2010, enrollment at Minnesota Private College Council (MPCC) member institutions increased to 63,324, including undergraduate and graduate students. This is a 1.1% increase from fall 2009 and an increase of 18% over 10 years.
The increase in graduate enrollment represents the largest change — up 2.6% from fall 2009 and up 30.7% since 2000. Undergraduate enrollment has grown at a slower rate — up 0.5% from 2009 and up 13.6% since 2000.
The number of entering students has increased from 2009 as well. New freshmen enrollment is up 1.3% while transfer students enrollment is similar to last year (+0.1% increase).
Increasing diversity
Enrollment of students of
color has gone up significantly, especially in the last four years. In
2010, of all new entering students, 17.2% of freshmen and 22.9% of
transfer students were students of color.
MPCC member institutions enroll a third of all students attending four-year institutions in Minnesota. This includes Minnesota residents and students coming from other states. For further data on enrollment, see the Minnesota Private College Research Foundation’s Fall 2010 Enrollment Report.
Programs aim to get girls to study STEM fields
For Jason Engbrecht, the proof that his physics camp for high school girls was a success was written in an unlikely medium — sawdust.
The St. Olaf physics professor recalls that after a long day of working on their projects last summer, one of 40 girls at the first Physics and Engineering Camp for Girls had traced the words "I love engineering" in a leftover pile of sawdust.
"Just the fact that they chose to write that said a lot," he said. The rising 9th through 12th grade students, some from Northfield and some from as far away as New Jersey, spent nine hours a day working on their Rube Goldberg projects, in an effort to create a machine that completes a simple task through a series of creative steps. "At the end of each day, they never really wanted to stop what they were doing," Engbrecht said.
Though a college professor, Engbrecht is the director and a driving force behind the camp, which aims to get high school women interested in studying STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines in college, and eventually making a career in these fields. The camp, and other efforts to interest, recruit and retain women in STEM majors, is a response to the historical lack of women in these areas, and to trends in the last decade showing decreases or stagnation in the numbers of women pursuing many STEM-related jobs.
"I'm frustrated, as someone who has dedicated their life to the field and to developing the next generation of scientists. The fact that I could be missing out on roughly half the talent that's out there is not okay," Engbrecht said.
Professor David Bressoud is equally concerned with the women who aren't majoring in his department — mathematics — at Macalester College. "I worry because I know a lot of very talented women who decided not to go forward in pursuing mathematics, and I wish they had because I really think they had something to contribute," Bressoud said.
Bressoud is especially concerned about math, as he's also the president of the Mathematical Association of America. He observes that while some STEM fields, like the biological sciences, actually now have an over-representation of women, other fields are losing them. Women now comprise about 43% of math majors nationally, down from almost half a decade ago, he said.
A complex issue
The reasons for the low
representation of women in STEM fields, experts say, are many. Bressoud
points to the American belief that a person is somehow born with a math
or science gene - an idea that hits girls especially hard because they
tend to underestimate their abilities and need more encouragement in the
first place.
Macalester senior Christina Fitzsimmons, a chemistry and biology double major, said low numbers might also be related to women not being able to picture themselves as scientists, mathematicians or engineers. "There are a lot of ideas of a scientist in pop culture that seem to be more of a turnoff to women than to men," she said, citing the stereotype that all scientists appear disheveled, work in windowless labs and rarely interact with people.
Fitzsimmons, who is the co-chair of the Macalester chapter of Women in Science and Math (WISM), said the goal of the organization is to provide support for women majoring in STEM fields. But the group is also involved in the larger community. A group of members are involved in a new STEM mentorship program at St. Paul's all-girls middle school, Laura Jeffrey Academy.
Still in the planning stages, the program aims to increase girls' interest in STEM fields through exposure to women who are studying those areas. The plan is to work with girls, grades 5-8, both during and after school, and also to bring them to Macalester so they can see actual labs and hang out with college students. "I think one of the reasons I'm in the sciences is that I had positive experiences early-on. It's still the case that girls sometimes feel that they aren't supposed to be good at math and science. We're saying to them that (these subjects) are fun and they're something they can do," Fitzsimmons said.
She said the Macalester environment is especially conducive to learning about science, largely because of its faculty. "It's a really welcoming environment," she said. "My professors are all excited about their subjects and it's highly contagious. It makes you want to go back and take another class with them."
Putting the "ME" in robots
It would be hard to
find someone more invested in STEM initiatives aimed at girls and women
than Yvonne Ng. Being able to teach a classroom of women — and only
women — about engineering was one of the reasons she chose to work at
St. Catherine University, she said.
In addition to teaching STEM-related courses to college students, she advises them as faculty coordinator at the St. Kate's Center for Women, Science and Technology, and organizes events designed to get girls excited about science. One such program is ME Robots, which introduces the basics of mechanical engineering and computer programming to elementary-aged girls.
Using implements like LEGOSTM and paper, the ME Robots curriculum has three levels, each consisting of four two-and-a-half hour weekend sessions. A collaboration with area Girls Scouts' programming, level one teaches the basics of gears "by making a little car go up a hill and learning about force, load and speed. We then compare that to things girls understand, like riding their bikes and changing gears, and they start to make connections," Ng said.
The subsequent level covers levers, while level three involves creating a device that can sweep and even avoid obstacles. Each level begins by teaching girls the new language and concepts, linking their learning to a final "challenge project." "Women get irritated if they don't get an answer to 'why are we learning this?' from the beginning," Ng said.
Girls report that after ME Robots classes, their confidence increases and they begin to see science in their everyday lives, Ng said.
Ultimately, she hopes the program will result in more women being interested in STEM careers — but that's not all. "We want to not only widen the pipeline to women continuing in STEM fields, but also have a positive influence on those who don't become engineers, so they can understand and better appreciate engineering and science."
Honors programs serve highly talented students
Students who take advanced placement or high school honors courses often wonder if they should consider participating in an honors program in college. It's one way that institutions attract and nurture their students who are especially academically talented. They're commonly offered at Minnesota's private colleges, but just what do they involve?
Bethel University student Amy Riggins describes her honors experience as "intellectual stimulation and love saturated with geekiness." Since her first day at Bethel, Riggins said her honors cohort has been a consistent community. "There are so many stories I could tell about how we spend hours on end talking about anything from theology to the latest nerdy interest or gadget to carving pumpkins," she said.
The structure of our honors programs vary, but most invite freshmen whose GPAs and test scores meet their requirements. The number of students differs by institution; for example, Bethel University accepts 25 students each year while Concordia College accepts 80. Most students stay in the program for all four years of their undergraduate study, taking a portion of their courses in honors-only sections. Students benefit from classes that are smaller than average, taught by top teachers and usually more discussion-based.
We talked with administrators and students at three of our institutions to find out more about their programs.
A focus on community-building
Bethel receives
around 65 applicants each year for its honors program and accepts 25.
"We are looking for academically talented students who are
intellectually curious, have an interest in the liberal arts and who
want to dig deeper," said Sara Shady, director of the program and a
philosophy professor. Students take four general education courses in
honors sections and do two individualized research projects attached to
courses — where they get significant one-on-one time with a professor,
Shady said.
Students also complete a senior thesis that they defend before a committee made up of two Bethel faculty and an outside person who has expertise on the student's topic. One student who is taking a biology course that covers bacteria resistance to antibiotics is doing her thesis on the public health implications of this problem. "They defend their thesis much like they would in graduate school," Shady said.
Another strength of the Bethel program is a focus on
community-building, Shady said. An honors course that stands out for
Riggins was on marginalized communities and peoples, where one of the
activities was a Roma (gypsy) party. Part of the fun was traipsing
across campus, decked out in Roma attire, to retrieve a missing
classmate, Riggins said. "I felt as if this silly and random exercise
was an important part of my college (and life) experience, simply
because of the people with whom I was traveling."
Community and business people who would like to volunteer to be on an honors thesis committee are invited to contact Shady.
Interdisciplinary and tuition-free seminars
Steve
Laumakis, director of the Aquinas Scholars program and a professor of
philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, believes that an honors
program should give students "greater than usual intellectual
challenges." St. Thomas accepts around 65 students each year in its
program. In addition to taking special sections in core courses, Aquinas
scholars also take three two-credit seminars — tuition-free. "This is
what sets St. Thomas apart," Laumakis said. The seminars are team-taught
and run seminar-style — where students learn to construct and defend
arguments. "Faculty aren't lecturers, they're facilitators," he said.
Aylie Meisner, who is president of the Aquinas Scholars Student Board, has found it to be very valuable. Last year she took the seminar "The Lunatic Fringe," where students discussed how people are drawn to extreme religions and what drives them psychologically to act in extreme ways. "Even now, [my classmates] still share stories from the news that pertain to the class," she said. "The interdisciplinary aspect of our program is something I think is incredibly special."
The non-academic aspects of Aquinas Scholars are important too, Meisner added. At monthly "Pizza with a Prof" events, a professor is invited to deliver a short lecture on a topic scholars have shown interest in. New this year is "Scholars Cinema" where the student board chooses an interesting movie, then students talk about it. "We've gotten a ton of positive feedback from these movie nights: it's led to a much stronger sense of community," Meisner said.
Understanding our changing world
Concordia
College in Moorhead offers two honors tracks — one that is major-based
and the other a "Credo" track. The focus of Credo is to explore the
ideas that have significantly changed our world. In their first three
years, Credo students take five specially designed courses in a range of
disciplines to develop their critical thinking, discussion and writing
skills. Examples of course topics are "Germany, Third Reich, Holocaust,"
"American Exceptionalism," "Life in the Universe" and "Cell Phones and
Cyberspace." During the fourth year, students complete a capstone
project and write a reasearch paper.
"These courses allow students to engage each other at an intellectual level; there's a high level of energy that students share," said Concordia's dean and VP for academic affairs, Mark Krejci. But what really sets Credo apart, Krejci said, is the honors study abroad experience in Crete. "This is always a life-changing experience for honors students. They are surrounded by the best minds on campus and accompanied by hand-picked faculty."
Freshman Kari Neutzling said she has already felt a number of benefits from her participation. "I am surrounded by students who are truly interested in challenging and expanding their thinking and reasoning abilities. That desire for expanded knowledge leads to fantastic, in-depth discussions," she said.
