by Daniel Covington
In an announcement to the school, President Milton C. Moreland said, “Centre College will begin offering majors in engineering and engineering studies after the programs were approved in a faculty vote. Engineering has been offered as a minor at the College since the Fall 2023 semester. Starting in Fall 2025, students will have the option to major in the field. The Engineering Program will prepare students for the important work of shaping the world around us.”
Christine Goble, associate professor of engineering and chair of the engineering program, added to this, saying, “Engineering students at Centre College will explore the field of engineering from a liberal arts perspective, bringing together art, science, mathematics and design.”
This all sounds great, but is it really? On the surface, adding an engineering major wasn’t something that made sense to most people at Centre, including the professors. It was a hotly debated decision. Centre College is small, after all; most small colleges just don’t have engineering majors, mainly because of lack of resources.
Personally, all the professors I knew were very hesitant at the least, if not fully against the idea. Professor John J. Perry, professor of Economics and Business, said, “With respect to differing opinions … I am not pro or anti engineering. I am, at core, pro Centre and pro good decision making. I think we should identify and lean into our competitive advantages. Maybe that includes Engineering and maybe it doesn’t. Some people were much more convinced than I that it was an obviously good idea—namely the physics faculty and the one new engineering professor. In the end, the faculty voted to approve it.”
It’s true; Centre is uniquely positioned to move in this direction compared to most colleges of its size. For starters, even though Centre did not have an engineering major, when applying to Centre there were always students who said they might want to do engineering. Another reason is, as stated above, Centre only needed to hire one new professor. Talk about bang for your buck! Lastly, Centre is trying to improve and attract more students. I can’t blame them. We live in an era where, in just a few years, we have seen the closings of several small colleges. College attendance has been down across America. College enrollment totaled 15.397 million undergraduate students nationwide in fall 2022, a 7% decline from 2019. This makes Centre’s job tough, especially when Centre is trying to not only stay afloat but to grow. This means it is incredibly important that Centre differentiates itself from its competition. Unfortunately, Centre can’t grow physically bigger overnight; but Centre can do more, and adding a new major hopefully does just that.
