Enrollment (Table 1)

The total number of students enrolled at Calvin this fall is a decade-high 4,330. This represents an increase of approximately one and one-half percent from last year's fall enrollment of 4,267. The total enrollment of 4,330 is the highest since 1988 and the 3rd largest enrollment ever for Calvin. The Traditional Undergraduate FTE (Full Time Equivalent) stands at 4,098 this fall, just under the high end of our optimal enrollment range of 3,900-4,100 Traditional Undergraduate FTE as established in the college's strategic plan.

Overall enrollment growth is due to a relatively large incoming class of FTIACs (1,049) as compared with the class that graduated in May-numbering 979 when they entered Calvin as the 1998 FTIAC cohort. Healthy retention rates at all class levels are also a contributing factor, as were slightly larger than average numbers of dually enrolled students.

Table 1 also shows a continuation of the historical trend toward more religious diversity at Calvin, with an increase in the percentage of students from outside the Christian Reformed Church (50.7%) and a corresponding decrease in the percentage of those with Christian Reformed affiliation (49.3%). The numbers and percentage of Canadian and AHANA students are both down slightly compared with last year, while the number of International citizens remains relatively constant.

Student Majors (Table 3)

The top three programs of study this fall, as measured by overall student enrollment in specific majors, are Elementary Education (9.6% of all majors), Secondary Education (6.8%), and Business (6.6%). Other top choices include English (4.8% of all majors), Nursing (4.6%), Psychology (4.3%), and Biology (3.7%).

The departments with the largest number of majors are Education (16.4%), Economics and Business (10.8%), Engineering (6.8%), Communication Arts & Sciences (6.0%, including Business/CAS group majors), English (4.8%), Nursing (4.6%), Psychology (4.3%), Biology (4.2%), and Sociology, Social Work, & Criminal Justice (4.0%). Nearly one-quarter (23%) of all declared majors are enrolled in one of the programs in Education.

Programs showing steady increases in majors over the past few years, including this year, are Elementary Education, English, Mathematics and Statistics, Nursing, and Religion and Theology. In addition, substantial one-year increases from 2001 to 2002 can be seen in the number of History and Psychology majors. In terms of Pre-professional programs, the number of students indicating Pre-Medicine is down somewhat while the numbers indicating pre-law and pre-architecture have increased in recent years.

Scholarships (Table 4)

The number of merit scholarship recipients continues to increase as a percentage of all FTIACs and all students. Fifty-nine percent of the entering FTIAC class received merit scholarships, up from 56% last year. Eighteen National Merit Scholars are part of the new entering class, and 13% of the class, or 137 students, are recipients of the Presidential Scholarship award of $5,500.

Demographics (Table 5), (Table 6), (Table 7)

Calvin students come from 47 different states, 7 Canadian provinces and 37 other foreign countries. After Michigan (54% of all students), the top three states or provinces represented are Illinois (7.8%), Ontario (4.1%), and California (3.2%). For detailed counts of student residences, see Table 5.

The distributions of students by race/ethnicity and citizenship are shown in Table 6. The largest group of U.S. ethnic minorities enrolled at Calvin is Asian-American, at 99 students (2.3%). The total non-white U.S. population of the college is 5.4%.

The 176 Canadian citizens in Table 6 represent 4.1% of our student body. However, Canadian affiliations on campus are more prevalent than this number suggests, since a sizable number of students are classified as U.S. citizens, but hold dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship (N=65). The top four non-North American countries represented by our International student citizens are South Korea (37 students), Nigeria (26 students), Ghana (18 students), and India (10 students).

Religious affiliations of students (Table 7) show Christian Reformed students making up roughly 49% of the student body, with the second largest group of students affiliated with an Undenominational church (10%). Other denominational families represented most often are Reformed, Presbyterian, and Baptist, each accounting for 6-7% of the student body.

Retention and Graduation Rates (Table 8)

This year's FTIAC retention rate of 87.2% represents an increase of one percentage point from last year and is the highest rate ever recorded at Calvin. The highest retention rates (based on four-year averages) continue among the following subgroups: top scholarship recipients (91%), CRC students (90%), alumni children (90%), and Christian high school graduates (88%). The high level of persistence of AHANA students from last year to this (82%) is again welcome news.

The five-year graduation rate of the entering 1997 FTIAC class is the highest ever, at 72%--up nearly a percentage point from last year. Encouraging trends are the higher than average increases in graduation rates for students from church backgrounds other than Christian Reformed (69%), public high school students (70%) and males (74%). Graduation rates for AHANA students and conditionally admitted students dipped to below 50% this year.

New Students: FTIAC and Transfer (Table 9)

While fewer students applied for first-time admission to Calvin this year than in each of the past three years, a higher proportion chose to enroll, resulting in a relatively large entering class numbering 1,049 students.

The number of enrolled FTIACs that are Christian Reformed increased from 48% last year to 51% this year. The percentage of the class that are children of alumni also rebounded from 34% last year to nearly 40% this year. The percentage of the enrolling class that is conditionally admitted continues a nearly decade-long decline, dropping once again from 7.1% last year to 6.3% this year.

The percentage of the class graduating from Christian High Schools increased slightly to 59% from last years' 58%. Additionally, the number and percentage of International Citizens, AHANA students and Canadian citizens decreased from last year. A much higher percentage of the FTIAC class are males this year (44.7%) compared with 41.5% last year.

Admitted to Enrolled Yields (Table 10)

Graduates of West Michigan Christian High Schools show the highest admit to enroll yields of all FTIACs, with 81% of them enrolling. Normally this group's enrollment yield is about 75%. Other FTIAC subgroups with consistently high yields are Christian Reformed Students (75%) and Christian high school students (66%). Alumni children yielded at a strong 76% this year, reversing a two-year decline.

The yield rate for students in other Great Lakes States has also reversed a two-year downward trend, increasing to 51% from 47% last year. Yields of AHANA, Canadian and International students have dropped this year after the above average yields last year for each of these groups. Yields of AHANA students were particularly low, at 36%. The overall yield for transfer admits, at 67%, is about average for the previous three years.

FTIAC GPAs and Test Scores (Table 11 & 12)

The academic strength of the entering first-year class as measured by high school GPA, by ACT and SAT test scores, and by class rank continues to be strong. Mean GPA stands at 3.53, slightly higher than last years' 3.49, while ACT Composite scores dropped two tenths of a point, from 25.6 to 25.4. The percentage of FTIACs graduating in the top 10% of their high school class remains at 27%, and the mean combined verbal and math SAT score is almost identical to last year, dropping slightly from 1177 to 1176.

Faculty Composition (Table 13), (Table 14)

The number of full-time teaching faculty at Calvin in 2002 is 291, up from 284 each of the past two years. An additional 83 part-time faculty this fall bring the total faculty FTE (a rough measure of the full-time teaching equivalent which adjusts for part-timers and reduced loads) to 301 this year, a 5% increase over last year.

The number of full-time female faculty increased from 90 to 92, while the number of males increased by 5. The proportion female remains roughly the same as last year (31.6%). The number of AHANA (ethnic minority) faculty has increased from 15 to 19. Other notables: the percentage of full-time faculty with a terminal degree is at 82%. The student to faculty ratio based on teaching duties college-wide is 14.8 to 1, the lowest in recent years. The numbers of faculty by Department are provided in Table 14.

Departmental Enrollments (Table 15) & Student:Faculty Ratios (Table 16)

The total number of registered student semester hours for fall 2002 is 59,195, a 1.6% increase over last year's 58,252. In the context of this overall increase, departments showing relatively larger increases (>100 hours) from fall 2001 to this fall are Chemistry and Biochemistry (up 113 hours), Education (up 150 hours), Engineering (up 213 hours), Germanic Languages (up 117 hours), Interdisciplinary (up 1283 hours), Nursing (up 175 hours), Sociology (up 213 hours), and Spanish (up 287 hours).

Table 16 combines information on student credit hours with numbers of FTE faculty to compute student-faculty ratios by department. Such ratios can provide a starting point for comparison and further inquiry in helping to inform decisions about departmental needs. The departments with the lowest ratios are Nursing (5.9 students per faculty), Music (8.7 students per faculty), French (10.9 students per faculty), and Computer Science (11.2 students per faculty), while those with the highest are Mathematics and Statistics (19.8), Economics and Business (19.5), and Religion and Theology and Psychology (both at 18.6) and Spanish (18.5).