2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Through our Work in Progress (WIP) paper, we intend to investigate why students who initially declare a STEM interest are not enrolling in a STEM major using a detailed interview protocol along with analysis of enrollment data.

Our small liberal-arts college does not allow students to declare a major until their second year. However, students enter the college by declaring interests and are matched to advisors in the majors they self-select as high interest. Throughout their first year, students take a common first-year seminar, a first-year writing course (of their own selection), and STEM students take 1-3 first-year STEM courses. We have noticed that many students who initially declare an interest in STEM declare non-STEM majors in their second year, and we are investigating why student’s interest changes in this first year. Through a structured interview protocol in this Work in Progress, we plan to answer the following research questions: 1) Why are students interested in STEM declaring in non-STEM majors? 2) What experiences in their first-year are influencing student decisions?

Our interview protocol will also be intended to be replicable by other institutions experiencing similar issues. The protocol is developed to capture student interests/motivations for STEM fields, explore their community development and its impact during their first year, and investigate the impact of pre-college courses/preparations. Through this protocol, we hope to identify common factors that are impacting student major decisions and create impactful interventions to increase student retention.