Currently, St. Olaf College has an engineering studies concentration with about 20 students enrolled. As the sixth cohort prepares to graduate this spring, Director of Engineering Studies Brian Borovsky, Vice President for Advancement Enoch Blazis, and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Tarshia Stanley presented to the Board of Regents to advocate for creating a new engineering major.
According to a meeting report by Anna Grace ’26, the student representative to the Board of Regents, the program currently fulfills four of the five core curricular requirements for Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, or ABET, accreditation. ABET is a nonprofit organization that evaluates and accredits academic programs in applied and natural sciences, computing, engineering and engineering technology.
Interest in engineering has grown, and the current concentration reflects efforts to meet student demand dating back decades. “Physics is the department that has been responsible for the growth of engineering,” Borovsky said. “The continued support of the department reflects the fact that so many of our students in physics have interests in engineering careers.”
As for next steps, “we would need to get started on an additional faculty position to be dedicated to engineering, and part of the comprehensive campaign is to raise the resources for this position,” Borovsky said. “Because we have a concentration, we can build on that strength. The few more classes we need in addition to the current concentration courses [for a major] could be added with the addition of this faculty position.”
Borovsky said the Board of Regents was receptive and enthusiastic about the proposal, noting that training engineers in a liberal arts context aligns well with the college’s mission. St. Olaf’s strengths in the liberal arts and sciences could serve as a foundation for an engineering major tailored to the institution.
“Students can come here and be excited about the way they can pursue engineering with all the other things St. Olaf offers,” Borovsky said.
“[The concentration] draws on a lot of different majors; there’s linear algebra, differential equations and multivariable calculus from the math major. We’ve got strong chemistry [courses] from the chemistry major, and the physics major offers a lot of good introductory and upper-level classes, and we have J-term classes that offer hands-on engineering experience,” engineering concentrator Anneliese Carlson ’28 said in an interview with The Olaf Messenger. “A lot of the bones are there.”
Carlson also said there is strong demand for the major.
“I would say that it is highly desired. Recently, there was a course [that] opened up involving welding and metalworking, and there was so much interest that two sections were created with around 20 students each, and even more were turned away,” she said. “If that doesn’t show the demand for more hands-on opportunities to actually experience engineering and figure out our career path, I don’t know what will.”
Borovsky said students in the program are trained in a liberal arts context and encouraged to ask “why” as they engage with engineering.
Students like Carlson said St. Olaf’s liberal arts approach is well-suited to enriching an engineering major.
“I have taken some interesting classes here. I’m able to talk about so many different things from that experience, and it just makes me a more well-rounded person because then you have engineers that not only know what they are talking about, but they want to be talking about it,” Carlson said.
As the process of adding the major moves forward, Borovsky will work with the curriculum committee to develop a proposal for a faculty vote. Next steps include working through shared governance among administrators and faculty to reach a common vision for engineering as a St. Olaf major.
