St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s Board of Trustees met virtually Friday, October 16, beginning at 4:50 p.m. The Board acted on several items including approving the curriculum for the College’s 25th major in neuroscience.
The Academic Affairs Committee endorsed the new major at the suggestion of faculty and staff challenged with recommending new college programming. According to the committee, the major received a favorable market analysis from an external research firm. Research found that neuroscience has been one of the most popular student-designed majors within the College’s core market, increasing in number by 86 percent between 2014 and 2018. The College’s minor in neuroscience, currently with 49 students, makes it the third largest minor on campus.
The new major in neuroscience will support the core mission of the College in providing a liberal arts and sciences education in an environment that fosters scholarship and intellectual integrity through close relationships with faculty in classes, laboratories, and the community. The major is particularly suited to this mission because of its interdisciplinary focus, with students learning to approach complex problems from multiple perspectives.
According to President Tuajuanda C. Jordan in her remarks to the Board, “key to our efforts to sustain the College’s viability is enrollment management.”
Vice President for Enrollment David Hautanen Jr. presented and enrollment update to the Board. about this year’s success. According to Hautanen, for the fall 2020 entering class, the College received 2,604 first-time, first-year (FTFY) applications – an increase of 62 percent compared to the previous year. It is the second largest number of FTFY applications in the history of the College. Enrollment for the fall 2020 semester includes 1,491 undergraduate students and 22 graduate students. While this figure is level with fall 2019, there are 12 more part-time undergraduate students and the proportion of new students has increased from 27 percent to 31 percent.
Jordan also stated that the College was “enhancing Admission staffing” and “providing the tools needed to attract, recruit, and admit sufficient numbers of students with the potential and capacity to succeed in this rigorous academic environment.”
Among those tools is the marketing of the new National Public Honors College that assists the Office of Admission reach its goals. This year alone, the College’s Integrated Marketing department has won nine awards for successfully branding and marketing the College: four in the Educational Advertising Awards; two in the Collegiate Advertising Awards; two in the APEX Awards for Publication Excellence; and one award in the Circle of Excellence Awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).
The schedule for the spring 2021 semester was also discussed. The spring semester will begin on January 19, 2021, and conclude on April 27, 2021. The 2021 class commencement will be held on May 8, 2021, allowing for the semester to end one week earlier than normal. Spring Break will be replaced by two mid-semester “mental health” breaks every six weeks during the semester.
St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the National Public Honors College, is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education through 2024-2025. St. Mary’s College is ranked one of the best public liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Approximately 1,600 students attend the college, nestled on the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland.
