Connecticut College - Academics

Academics

The college offers more than a thousand courses in 29 academic departments and 7 interdisciplinary programs, and students can choose from 45 traditional majors plus opportunities for self-designed courses of study. The 10 most common majors over the last five years have been English, Economics, Psychology, Government, History, Biological Sciences, International Relations, Anthropology, Human Development, and Art. About 30% of Connecticut College students in recent years have graduated with double majors. The most common double-major combinations are Government/History, Economics/International Relations, and Economics/Government, but graduates in recent years have also chosen interdisciplinary combinations such as Art/Computer Science, Film Studies/Latin American Studies, Biological Sciences and Religious Studies, and Art History/Italian.

Admission to the college is selective. There were 4,837 applications for admission in 2012: 1,734 were admitted (35.8%) and 503 matriculated (29%).

The college's First-Year Seminar Program provides student-faculty engagement in a small, intellectually stimulating setting in their first semester.

Connecticut College has four interdisciplinary centers that administer certificate programs, plus a fifth center that facilitates the teaching and researching of race and ethnicity across the curriculum. If accepted into one of the college's four certificate programs, students of any major complete a self-designed series of courses that relate to their academic interest, complete a college-funded summer internship, and complete an integrative project in their senior year. These four centers routinely attract the college's best students and are a model for the kinds of integrated educational pathways the college offers its students.

• Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology (CAT) Through the Ammerman Center, faculty and students can shape the study, use and creation of new technologies, probe the forefront of their fields and work in new markets with innovative products.

• Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts (CISLA) The CISLA mission is to encourage students to become public intellectuals: those who are politically concerned, socially engaged, and culturally sensitive and informed. CISLA prepares them to internationalize their majors and become responsible citizens in a global community.

• Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy (PICA) The Holleran Center orchestrates college and community resources to build on assets, respond to needs, and facilitate community revitalization and problem solving.

• Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment (CCBES) The Goodwin-Niering Center is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary program that builds on one of the nation's leading undergraduate environmental studies programs. The center fosters research, education, and curriculum development aimed at understanding contemporary ecological challenges. The center is named in honor of Richard H. Goodwin, Katharine Blunt Professor Emeritus of Botany, and William A. Niering, Lucretia L. Allyn Professor Emeritus of Botany. Professor Goodwin was among the early leaders of the Nature Conservancy, serving as its president from 1956–58 and 1964-66.

• Students can earn Connecticut teacher certification and certificates in the college's Museum Studies program.

• Between 50 and 55% of the student body studies abroad at some point during their four years. Connecticut College offers several ways for students to study abroad, including traditional study away programs, semester-long Study Away, Teach Away (SATA) programs, and shorter Traveling Research and Immersion Programs (TRIPs) that are typically related to specific courses.

• The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Theater Institute confers course credit through Connecticut College. Students often intern and partake in semester study-away programs at the institute.

• Many opportunities for conventional study abroad are available, as well as the special programs CISLA (one of the academic centers) offers students to "internationalize" their major, and SATA (Study Away Teach Away), in which a Connecticut College professor takes a small group of students for a semester to a country that the professor has experience with, and there the students take classes at a local university, and one with the Conn professor.

• Students' classroom learning at Connecticut College is supplemented by a wide variety of service learning courses and volunteer work in the New London area. Many of these opportunities are coordinated by the Office of Volunteers for Community Service. OVCS facilitates student involvement in the community by running a van shuttle service, which transports students to and from sites in the area.

• Connecticut College has a history of undergraduate research work and students are encouraged to make conference presentations and publish their work under the guidance of a professor.

• Connecticut College graduating seniors are regularly awarded prestigious fellowships and grants such as the U.S. Student Fulbright Program grant. Connecticut College has been recognized as a top producer of Fulbright awardees. In 2012, for example, nine Connecticut College graduates received Fulbright grants.