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Wabash College is a selective, four-year, liberal arts college for men, located in rural Indiana. Approximtely 170 students graduate each year. Twenty years ago, 16% of these graduates were mathematics majors or minors (6% majors, 10% minors). From 1995 to 2003, this number dropped to 9% (3% majors, 6% minors). Since then, and including our current juniors and seniors, we are now back up to 16% (6% majors, 10% minors). By comparison, just under 1% of undergraduates nationwide major in mathematics (we could not find the national figure for math minors). The purpose of this paper is to briefly describe Wabash, our department, our program, and why our student numbers are so robust.
Wabash has no engineering or business programs; in fact, there are only four other majors that require any mathematics courses: Physics (2-7 majors per year; 5 required mathematics courses), Chemistry (7-13 majors per year; Calculus I & II required), Biology (14-25 majors per year; Calculus I required), and Economics (15-25 majors per year; Calculus I required). The average Math SAT score of incoming freshmen is about 600. Although mathematics is not required to graduate from Wabash, most students take at least two courses in our department, partly due to our science distribution requirement, as well as our (relatively new) quantitative skills requirement.
The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science has seven tenure lines, four of which were filled between 1998 and 2002. We teach an average of 39 courses per year in the department. Our teaching efforts are comprised of approximately 20% non-majors courses (Statistics, Discrete Math, and Contemporary Mathematics) and slow-paced calculus, 10% Calculus I, 10% Calculus II, 15% computer science, and 45% major and minor courses with at least a calculus prerequisite. Math majors are required to take nine mathematics courses (with a few required foundational courses, and the balance elective). Math minors are required to take Calculus I, Calculus II, and Linear Algebra, plus two other mathematics courses.
We "grow" most of our majors and minors in Calculus II and Linear Algebra. Over the last twenty years the total number of students who take Calculus II has been an excellent predictor (r = 0.90) of the number of majors and minors we get 3 years later. Each student in...