Memo of Transmittal

To:
Kim Marsalek
From: Anthony Delgado
Date:
March 6, 2016
Subject: Recommendation Report Regarding CENGs Change of Major Policy

The attached document is a recommendation report with regards to the current unit limit
placed on students at Cal Poly wishing to switch their current major to one in the
College of Engineering. The purpose of this report is to address and fix the problems
with the current policy in terms of helping students switch to their target major.
The major problem discussed in this report is the issue of registration for classes for
students who wish to change majors, and how this issue affects students close to the
current 90-unit limit.
I have posed three different solutions and have also analyzed the feasibility and
effectiveness of each. I have listed them here:
1. Raise the unit limit to 120 units, providing students more time to enroll in required
classes
2. Allow students to enter Cal Poly as undeclared, and mandate a choice by a
specific time in their college career
3. Keep the current 90-unit limit, but offer students special enrollment privileges
when they change majors.
The methods of research I used to create my conclusions are as follows:
1. Interview with Kim Marsalek
2. Online Research (including both scholarly and non-scholarly articles and web
pages)
I have included the relevant information from my research in the Results section of this
report. I have used the gathered information to determine the benefits and detriments
to choosing each respective solution offered in the report. This analysis can be found in
the reports Conclusion section. My final recommendation on which solution to
implement into the Change of Major policy is listed in the Recommendation section.
I hope you find this report to be of use to you. If you have any questions or feedback
regarding this report, feel free to contact me.

Recommendation Report
Amending the Change of Major Policy in Cal Polys
College of Engineering

Prepared by: Anthony Delgado

Prepared for: Kim Marsalek
Date of Submittal: March 7, 2016

Table of Contents
Introduction.....1-2
Methods.2-3
3. Interview with Kim Marsalek...2
4. STEM Attrition: College Students Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields2
5. Does Changing Majors Really Affect the Time to Graduate? The Impact of
Changing Majors on Student Retention, Graduation, and Time to
Graduate..2
6. The Developmental Disconnect in Choosing a Major: Why Institutions Should
Prohibit Choice until Second Year...3
7. Changing Majors within CENG.......3
Results...3-5
1. Interview with Kim Marsalek3
2. STEM Attrition: College Students Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields4
3. Does Changing Majors Really Affect the Time to Graduate? The Impact of
Changing Majors on Student Retention, Graduation, and Time to
Graduate..4
4. The Developmental Disconnect in Choosing a Major: Why Institutions Should
Prohibit Choice until Second Year...5
5. Changing Majors within CENG.......5
Conclusion...5-8
1. Raising the Unit Limit...6
2. Creating an Undeclared Option..6
3. Offering Special Registration Privileges7
4. Last Thoughts8
Recommendation...8

Appendix 9-10
1. Interview Questions..9
2. STEM Attrition Data...10
References.11
Figures Referenced.12

Table of Figures
Figure 1: STEM Attrition Chart....10

Introduction
The Change of Major policy in the College of Engineering at Cal Poly, while significantly
better now than it was in the past, contains issues that limit students from exploring
different fields that may hold greater overall interest for those students. This holds true
specifically in the policys limit on the number of units one may take before being unable
to switch their major; in short, a student may only take up to 90 units before being
unable to switch their major [5]. While the current 90-unit limit seems fair in some
respects, it restricts students who, after some time only exploring one major, may feel
dissatisfied in their current career path, and might want to explore a different field of
study.
As previously stated, the current Change of Major policy in the College of Engineering
(Abb. CENG) states that a student shall be unable to change his or her major once that
student has completed 90 on-campus units. This can only be voided if the student can
prove that he or she is able to graduate within five years of their enrollment in the
university [5].
Prior to the current policy, the Change of Major Policy for CENG stated that a student
could not change their major if they had completed more than 24 units that did not apply
to the desired major. This policy was much more restrictive in that it had the potential to
bar one from switching majors before that persons second year. Though flawed, there
are a couple of significant things to glean from this older policy. Firstly, it is clear through
the switch to the new policy that the board in charge of the Change of Major Policy in
CENG has been trying to give more freedom to the students in terms of switching
majors. Secondly, this old framework was most likely used to shepherd students toward
a timely graduation; keeping this in mind, this type of method could be effectively
implemented later in a students college career if that student was given more freedom
earlier on in their college career.
The problem with the current policy lies mostly with registration problems. Usually in the
major-switching process, students must complete a number of prerequisite courses in
their target major before they are allowed to switch. However, due to how impacted the
Engineering majors are, those classes are usually reserved for students who are
already in that major. While anecdotal, a significant example of this took place when I
tried enrolling in CPE 101 in order to switch into the schools computer science
department; the probability of me getting into the class was so small that the advisors I
contacted told me to consider waiting until the next quarter to enroll (which, for me, was
not an option). This type of restriction, as exemplified, leads to students being unable to
enroll in the classes needed to switch, and thus they must wait another quarter to
attempt to enroll. Considering this scenario, a student could be under the unit limit
during one quarter, not get the necessary class to switch his or her major, go over the
limit by the start of the next quarter, and thus be ineligible to switch his or her major.
A significant reason for a large portion of students switching majors may also lie in the
fact that Cal Poly does not allow students to come in undeclared; that is, students must
choose a major upon entry to the university. This leads to students falling under
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pressure to choose a major, basing choice off of necessity to choose rather than an
understanding of the major. A lack of understanding of the major leads to many students
eventually trying to switch their major, with or without success.
This report will focus on illustrating the importance of offering more freedom to current
and prospective engineering students at Cal Poly, and it will specifically consider the
revision of how CENG limits students in the Change of Major process.
Here, I have provided multiple recommendations to substitute the current 90-unit limit:
1. Raise the unit limit to 120 units, providing students more time to enroll in required
classes
2. Allow students to enter Cal Poly as undeclared, and mandate a choice by a
specific time in their college career
3. Keep the current 90-unit limit, but offer students special enrollment privileges
when they change majors.
Methods
Below, you will see the research methods I used to frame my recommendation.
Interview with Kim Marsalek
On March 2, 2016 at 11:30 a.m., I conducted a short interview with Kim Marsalek, the
director of Engineering Advising Center at Cal Poly. Aside from this position, Marsalek
also has a seat in the councils of both the campus-wide Change of Major Policy as well
as that of the College of Engineering. I decided to interview Marsalek based on her
position, a position that gives her a large amount of insight on how the Change of Major
policy is currently morphing at Cal Poly. During our interview, I asked Marsalek a short
number of questions regarding the current efforts going toward changing the current
policy and any past or recent consideration of giving students more freedom in changing
their majors [1]. The list of the specific questions I asked can be found in Appendix A.
Scholarly Articles
After searching multiple online scholarly databases, I came across two articles that are
particularly associated with the personal circumstances of incoming engineering majors
across multiple colleges. The first study explores the inflow/outflow of STEM majors in
college. I also found a study that explores the undeclared major option.
1. STEM Attrition: College Students Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields from
National Center for Education Statistics
This article provides the rates of attrition from STEM fields (including
Engineering and Computer Science), further emphasizing the importance
of allowing more freedom to enter those fields [2].
2. Does Changing Majors Really Affect the Time to Graduate? The Impact of
Changing Majors on Student Retention, Graduation, and Time to Graduate from
Western Kentucky University
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This paper provides in-depth statistics that compare graduation rates

between students who immediately declare a major, students who begin
undeclared and quickly choose a major, and students who remain
undeclared for a prolonged amount of time [3].

Other Online Sources

While not scholarly articles, these sources still provide significant insight into the major
system, and one of these sources provides specific insight into Cal Polys Change of
Major system.
1. The Developmental Disconnect in Choosing a Major: Why Institutions Should
Prohibit Choice until Second Year from Pennsylvania State University
This article from PSU delves into the benefits of allowing students time
before forcing them to declare a major [4].
2. Changing Majors within CENG from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
This page shows the general guidelines for switching into a CENG major.
Following my interview with Kim Marsalek, I chose to investigate this
webpage in order to see how much guidance the college gives students
wishing to change their major [5].
Results
Below, the results from the research mentioned in the previous section are shown.
Interview with Kim Marsalek
During my interview with Kim Marsalek, I gained a large amount of perspective on the
side of the policy makers. I first asked her about the difference between the campuswide Change of Major policy and the engineering policy. She responded quickly to this
by informing me that the 90-unit limit is, in fact, a policy exclusive to CENG; the other
colleges still follow the 24-unit limit as mentioned in the above Introductions section.
The 90-unit limit has only been in place since this past fall, so it is relatively new. In fact,
the policy is being used as a pilot program; that is, if the policy proves successful in
the College of Engineering (i.e. allows more students to successfully change their
major), it may be adopted by the other five colleges within Cal Poly [1].
According to Marsalek, the reason for placing the limit at 90 units was largely influenced
by state funding. As a state-funded university, Cal Poly is expected to have its students
graduate within a reasonable time frame; for the makers of the 90-unit limit, a five year
time frame seemed reasonable, and a 90-unit limit would be best in order for students to
maintain a five-year graduation plan.
When asked if there had ever been any proposals to introduce the undeclared option
for incoming students, Marsalek noted that there was little talk of it, and that it has yet to
develop into anything substantial to be considered by the rest of the board. However,
Marsalek expressed full support of the undeclared option.

Marsalek also mentioned that the Individual Change of Major Agreement (Abb. ICMA),
which is used to put students on the right track towards their target major, is currently
being reworked. Since registration for classes is one of the larger dilemmas with
switching ones major, I asked if there was any way for the ICMA to allow a student to
gain special enrollment in a required prerequisite class for their target major.
Unfortunately, Marsalek said that enrollment was out of the control of the Change of
Major board, and was left to the discretion of the professors. However, Marsalek did
mention that the policy-makers and the professors have started to gain better
connections recently, so such an implementation in the ICMA might become possible in
the future.
In addition to this problem, Marsalek also recently learned that many students who are
attempting to switch majors have been doing so without consulting advisors or other
faculty members who could provide a significant amount of assistance with changing
ones major.
Scholarly Articles
1. STEM Attrition: College Students Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields from
National Center for Education Statistics
The study conducted in this article, focusing on students from 2003-2009,
found that STEM students tended to switch out of their majors as
frequently as students not in STEM majors. 41 percent of observed
students who began college in an engineering major left their major, while
a full 59 percent of beginning computer/information science majors left the
field. The direct results are listed in Figure 1, which can be viewed in
Appendix B. This was highlighted as an issue due to the large necessity of
STEM jobs to fuel our economy [2].
2. Does Changing Majors Really Affect the Time to Graduate? The Impact of
Changing Majors on Student Retention, Graduation, and Time to Graduate from
Western Kentucky University
This study covered statistics between students who declared a major and
persisted in it versus students who began as undeclared and eventually
changed. The study focused on proportions of these students within three
consecutive terms.
Looking at the first term, students who immediately declared a major only
had a marginally higher 6-year graduation rate than the undeclared-entry
students (only about 1% more of declared students graduated).
The second term introduced different groups; the first was the group that
entered as declared and persisted, the second included students who
entered as undeclared and chose a major after their first term, and the
third included students who remained undeclared. Out of these groups,
those who began as undeclared and chose a major did much better than
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the other two groups, who did about as well as each other (63.4% versus
the declared majors 53.4% and the undeclared majors 54.0%).
After the third term, the conductors of the study observed that students
excelled when beginning as undeclared and chose a major within their
second or third term [3].
Other Online Sources
1. The Developmental Disconnect in Choosing a Major: Why Institutions Should
Prohibit Choice until Second Year from Pennsylvania State University
This article expressed that 25-50% of students enter college without a
declared major. Other studies mentioned in the article include one in which
a survey of 800 students stated the motives for choosing their major
mostly involving family influence and assumption rather than through an
understanding of their own personal goals and values [4].
The article also quotes a 2006 Canadian study which found through
observing over 80,000 students that good grades are positively associated
with having a major close to ones personality [4].
2. Changing Majors within CENG from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
From this webpage, I noticed that the CENG Advising Center has not
given students any incentive to contact an advisor for help with switching
majors, aside from a clause that states that students switching for a
second time should contact the Advising Center rather than attend a
workshop. This helps to explain Kim Marsaleks problem of a large
quantity of students not consulting advisors with regard to changing their
majors [5].
Conclusion
The College of Engineering is evidently taking many risks already to improve its Change
of Major policy, as the college has already strayed from the restrictive campus-wide
policy with its own 90-unit limit. However, considering the policys infancy, it is
unsurprising that CENG is still having problems with helping students switch to a
different major, whether the problem lies in class registration or in the lack of
communication between students and advisors.
My proposed solutions, noted at the beginning of this report, included the following:
1. Raise the unit limit to 120 units, providing students more time to enroll in required
classes
2. Allow students to enter Cal Poly as Undeclared, and mandate a choice by a
specific time in their college career

3. Keep the current 90-unit limit, while allowing students special enrollment
privileges when they change majors
I will now analyze all three solutions, and offer my recommendation on which one to
execute.
Raising the Unit Limit
The advantage to the solution of raising the unit limit is that it would be the easiest to
implement. From my interview with Kim Marsalek, I was able to learn that the College of
Engineering is already spearheading the 90-unit limit policy, which is a large departure
from the campus-wide policy [1]. Given the freedom that CENG possesses in reframing
its policy, it would be well within the colleges power to raise the limit to 120 units. By
raising the unit limit, students bordering 90 units will have more time to register for
classes, thereby giving them extra time in case they are unable to register for any
necessary classes for one or more quarters.
The accessibility of this solution, however, is contrasted by the ways that it could
backfire on the university. Firstly, in order for the limit raise to be significant to students
changing majors, those students would have to be planning on changing their major
before they reach 90 units; students who wait until they border the 120 unit limit would
simply run into the problems inherent in the current 90 unit limit. This problem is not too
significant, as the point of raising the limit would be to help those who wish to change
their major around their 90-unit time frame (likely around their second year).
However, this brings up the fact that students with more than 90 units would be able to
potentially change their major. The problem with this is that they would likely take a
much longer time to graduate than Cal Polys state funding would allow for. This would
cause not only a non-timely graduation for some students, but would also create a drop
in funding for the university (which would also most likely lead to an increase in tuition).
Creating an Undeclared Option
The solution of adding an undeclared option for students would help students to find a
fitting major earlier on in their college career, helping them to avoid switching at a later
time.
There are numerous benefits to this solution. By looking at studies on undeclared
students, I found that students who enter college without declaring major do just as well,
even sometimes substantially better, than students who choose a major from the
beginning, provided that they choose a major within the first few terms of their college
career. When measuring the performance of undeclared-enterers versus declaredenterers, I refer to their ability to graduate within a reasonable time frame. From the
Western Kentucky University study, it is clear that starting college without a declared
major does not usually negatively impact ones graduation time [3].
Adding the undeclared option for incoming students would allow exploration for those
unsure of the possible career paths that lie ahead of them. When observing the study
on STEM attrition [2], one factor that may have caused such a large percentage of
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students to leave is that many students are rushed into choosing their major, as
discussed by Liz Freedman in the article I found from Pennsylvania State University [4].
By not forcing students to choose a major right away, students would be freer to explore
the multiple types of engineering.
The biggest problem with this solution is that it would require a lot of reworking, mostly
in terms of the enrollment system. In order to allow students to more freely explore
classes earlier on, lower-level classes in each department would have to not hold
reserved seats. Due to how impacted many engineering majors are, engineering
departments may be reluctant in opening seats to all students for fear of students in that
specific department falling behind in their studies; however, this problem could be
solved if Cal Poly invested in increasing sections in these courses. By funding extra
sections for courses, and assuming timely graduation rates increase as a result, the
university could see an increase in funding, making for an overall profit.
Offering Special Registration Privileges
The prospect of offering special enrollment to students is the solution that most directly
addresses the major problem with the 90-unit limit. Registering for classes is the most
counter-intuitive process for students wishing to change their majors, as the required
courses to switch majors are usually reserved for students already enrolled in the major.
For a student facing this problem, their only current option is to wait until open
enrollment, a time by which it is unlikely any more seats will be available in the required
course. If a student is bordering the unit limit, this problem is made more extreme by the
fact that they can become unable to switch majors simply by not enrolling in their
required course(s) and exceeding the unit limit by their next quarter. Offering registration
privileges to students wishing to switch majors would solve this glaring problem by
guaranteeing these students entry in their required courses, even if they are currently
bordering the unit limit.
This solution would become particularly effective if CENGs advising center was more
vocal to students about the support that the center can offer when a student wants to
change a major. Marsaleks statement about students not contacting advisors about
changing majors is no surprise when looking at the Change of Major webpage [5]. The
advising center provides students with all the information to switch majors, yet does
nothing to promote their willingness to directly help in the matter [5]; this prompts the
students to simply take the information given to them and figure things out on their own.
If enrollment privileges were to become a reality in the Change of Major process,
stressing the importance of contacting advisors could significantly increase the success
of students who try to change majors.
One problem that stands out significantly is that the Change of Major policy board
believes that students who are changing majors should rely more on professors to enroll
in prerequisite classes (as made evident by Kim Marsalek in our interview). This belief
makes little sense, as through firsthand experience I can say that not even the
professors have enough power to help these students, mostly because they are forced
to hold seats for students who are already in that major. This lack of communication
7

between the advisors and professors is disconcerting, and while Marsalek did mention
that connections were tightening between the policy-makers and the professors, neither
of these parties seems to hold enough power over the enrollment system to give special
privileges to struggling Change of Major students. This would mean that in order to
implement an enrollment privilege mechanic in the Change of Major system, the College
of Engineering would need to find the staff with the means to make it a reality, and then
they would need to begin building connections with this group of people. This would
take an incredibly long time, given the slow development of the policy boards
connection even with the schools professors.
Last Thoughts
I believe the solution with the greatest ratio of benefits to costs is the solution to include
an undeclared option for incoming freshmen. Raising the current 90-unit limit, while
simple in execution, might lead to a drop in state-funding without proper guidance of
students. While the option to add enrollment privileges to major-switching students is
less corruptible, it would take much too long, even in theory, to implement. The
undeclared solution would take about as much time to implement as the enrollment
privilege option, but it has the potential to produce more overall benefits to both Cal Poly
and its students. Therefore, the recommendation I have chosen is to implement an
undeclared option for students upon entry to Cal Poly, with a 1-year limit on choosing
a major and the inclusion of the 90-unit limit that is currently in place.
Recommendation
I recommend allowing students to come to Cal Poly without having to choose a specific
major. The requirements to achieve this solution would be to increase the amount of
classes at Cal Poly (in each department), to increase the number of programs at Cal
Poly that seek to educate students on different fields of study, and to eliminate the
number of class sections that hold reserved seats for specific students.

Appendix
Appendix A: Interview Questions
The questions listed in this appendix were the questions I used during my Interview with
Kim Marsalek. These questions sparked further conversation on the subject matter,
leading to the varied information in the Results section.
Q1: What is the current campus-wide Change of Major policy at Cal Poly? How does
the College of Engineerings policy differ from the general policy?
Q2: Has the board in charge of the College of Engineerings Change of Major policy
considered pushing the 90-unit limit currently in place to a higher unit limit?
Q3: Has there ever been any consideration toward adding the option for incoming
students to enter without declaring a major?
Q4: For students attempting to switch their majors, is there any way to gain a
guaranteed spot in the classes required to make the switch?
Q5: What is currently being done with regard to changes in the Change of Major policy,
be it campus-wide or specific to the College of Engineering?

Appendix B: STEM Attrition Data

Figure 1: This figure, taken directly from the article on STEM attrition, emphasizes the large quantity of
students dropping out of the fields of engineering and computer science [6].

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References
[1] K. Marsalek, Interview with Kim Marsalek, In-Person Interview. 2 March 2016.

[2] X. Chen, STEM Attrition: College Students Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields,
National Center for Education Statistics, 2013.

[3] M. J. Foraker, Does Changing Majors Really Affect the Time to Graduate? The
Impact of Changing Majors on Student Retention, Graduation, and Time to
Graduate, Western Kentucky University Office of Institutional Research, 2012.

[4] L. Freedman and Pennsylvania State University (2013, June). The Developmental
Disconnect in Choosing a Major: Why Institutions Should Prohibit Choice until
Second Year [Online]. Available: https://dus.psu.edu/mentor/2013/06/disconnectchoosing-major/

[5] Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Changing Majors within CENG [Online]. Available:
http://eadvise.calpoly.edu/majors/changing-majors-within-ceng/

11

Figures Referenced
[6] X. Chen, STEM Attrition: College Students Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields,
National Center for Education Statistics, pp. 15, Fig. 2, 2013.

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