Major Hopping: A Cohort Analysis

In 1993, Georgia Tech embarked on a series of General Education Assessment seminars with the aim of studying how to measure the impact of our programs in the general educational arena (as opposed to the curricula defined by academic majors). These seminars were designed after the Harvard Assessment Series led by Dr. Richard Light. One issue that arose in these discussions was the pattern of major changes at Georgia Tech. There is a lot of folklore at Tech about these patterns and there is a generally held belief that they differ by gender. Drs. Lynn Fountain, then of the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC) and Donna Llewellyn, of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, set out to see if this modern legend would hold up to the scrutiny of data. During the course of the data collection and analysis, Drs. Fountain and Llewellyn became part of an NSF funded multi-institutional project called InGEAR (Integrating Gender Equity And Reform) whose goal is to impact gender equity in education through teacher preparation programs. Part of this grant is dedicated to institutional self-studies for the five universities and colleges involved. Since by the time InGEAR had started at Tech the General Assessment Seminar Series had finished, the major changing pattern study was folded into this institutional self-study.