Why did the number of students completing an EA major at Pomona drop so significantly in 2021? Did they all take a gap year?
Hmm, that’s odd. It’s certainly possible that some may have taken gap years. My daughter graduated that year with a Pomona EA major, but she wouldn’t be counted in those stats because she was a Scripps student - and definitely not the only one in that cohort. One thing that happened with her graduating class was that they suspended the capstone class that seniors normally take in the spring, after completing an undergraduate thesis in the fall. It was too difficult to have teams of students work with local non-profits once everything had gone remote; I don’t think it went well for the second half of the 2020 spring semester after they sent all the students home. It was decided that in pandemic times, just having the seniors do a full-year thesis would be a more workable alternative. I guess it’s possible that this change could have been a factor in some deciding to postpone. At any rate, between the Pomona students and the off-campus majors from Scripps, it didn’t seem as if the thesis advising class was under-enrolled… but I guess there may be more than one section in a normal year.
Overall, the program seemed vibrant during my daughters upper-division years, with new classes being developed in partnership with The Hive (the Design hub of the 5C’s) and involving visiting lecturers with prominent roles in the green building and landscape architecture fields in the area, in addition to the tenured faculty who are excellent. The faculty advising within EA was unfailingly supportive and clearly went the extra mile for the students. The program always seemed healthy and robust from what I could see.
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