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Academic Environment
The Curriculum
FIRST-YEAR EXPERIENCE
In their first year at college, students build connections to academic
and residential communities, identify intellectual interests, and
encounter faculty expectations for excellence. The First-Year Experience
Program provides curricular, co-curricular, and residential
opportunities that facilitate entering students' successful integration
into the Skidmore College community. Through New Student Orientation,
Scribner Seminars, and other Campus Life and Residential programming,
students learn to balance freedom with responsibility, solve problems,
and develop strategies for academic achievement.
Interdisciplinary Study: Scribner Seminars
A distinctive feature of
intellectual activity at Skidmore is the college's attention to
interdisciplinary learning. The ability to integrate ideas from several
different disciplines lends coherence to a student's entire college
education and may be applied to many areas of life. Scribner Seminars,
the centerpiece of the First-Year Experience, constitute a significant
interdisciplinary component of the curriculum. (See
course descriptions
for titles of Scribner Seminars.) Scribner Seminars, each limited to 15
first-year students, invite participants to work closely with faculty
and peers; help students identify and fulfill their academic
aspirations; introduce them to new ways of thinking; and provide
opportunities to work both collaboratively and independently. The
Seminars reflect the academic interests and intellectual passions of the
faculty instructors, inviting first-year students to take intellectual
risks, and challenging their notions about inquiry and knowledge. (See
Interdisciplinary
Courses for additional opportunities to pursue interdisciplinary learning.)
As the foundation of their college experience, Skidmore students
strengthen their writing proficiency and demonstrate competence
in quantitative reasoning. The ability to read critically, to
write clearly and precisely, and to reason quantitatively lies
at the heart of a liberal arts education. Skidmore students
thus exercise, during their first years of study, the indispensable
tools of intellectual discourse and discovery.
Expository Writing. Students are required to complete successfully
one designated expository writing course by the end of the sophomore
year. Students placed in EN103 Writing Seminar I must complete
this prerequisite course by the end of the first year. Designated
writing courses offered by the English Department and in various
disciplines can be taken to fulfill the expository writing requirement.
Skidmore’s writing program includes tutorial help at the
Writing Center.
Quantitative Reasoning. Quantitative skills are not only promoted through
a wide range of mathematics, computer, economics, and statistics
courses, but also are reinforced by peer and professional support
services directed by the Department of Mathematics and Computer
Science. All students will demonstrate competence in basic mathematical
and computational principles by the end of the sophomore year.
This may be demonstrated by attaining a sufficiently high score
on the MSAT I exam (630) or any mathematics SAT II exam (570)
or ACT math score of 28 or higher, by passing Skidmore’s
quantitative reasoning examination, or by successfully
completing MA100 Quantitative Reasoning. By the end of the junior
year, all students must successfully complete a designated course
in mathematics, statistics, or other numerical operations in
various academic disciplines, or in the use of computers for
the manipulation of mathematical, social-scientific, or scientific
data.
The purpose of the breadth requirements is to ensure that
students come to know and understand the central questions,
content, and types of analysis that characterize the major
knowledge domains of the liberal arts: the arts, humanities,
natural sciences, and social sciences. Students who have completed
these requirements should be able to identify, understand,
and evaluate the significance of continuously developing knowledge
in each of these domains. Courses fulfilling the breadth requirements
will ordinarily be at the introductory level.
Students must successfully complete
one course in each of the following four fields:
Arts:
Students actively engage in the making or performing of artworks
as modes of creative invention, interpretation, expression,
and discovery. Through the critique and analysis of artworks,
students develop a context for and an understanding of their
own creative output as well as the creations of others. The
fundamental student learning goals include the advancement
of technical proficiency and the refinement of critical aesthetic
sensibility. Courses in this category are typically, but not
exclusively, offered in creative writing, dance performance, music performance, studio
(visual) art, and theater performance.
Humanities:
Students examine and reflect upon human culture as expressed
in historical tradition, literature and languages, art and
music, ideas and beliefs. Students learn about diverse heritages,
customs and values that form patterns and analogies but not
general laws. The humanities search for an understanding of
the unique value of the particulars within human contexts
and thereby create a climate that encourages freedom of thought,
imagination, and inquiry. Courses in this category are typically,
but not exclusively, offered in art history, classics, dance theory and history,
literature (in English and in other languages) music theory and history, philosophy,
religion, and theater theory and history.
Natural Sciences:
Students actively engage in the process of understanding
the natural world through the use of scientific methods. Students
study phenomena that are the product of natural processes
and are known through the senses rather than only through
thought or intuition. Through the laboratory component of
courses meeting this requirement, students will design and
execute experiments (where appropriate as dictated by the
discipline), collect data by observation and/or experimentation,
and analyze data. Student learning goals thus include mastery
of both content and process. Courses in this category are
typically, but not exclusively, offered in biology, chemistry,
exercise science, geosciences, physics, and psychology.
Social Sciences:
Students study the organizational structure
of human societies. They learn about the origins, functions,
dynamics, and relations of large-scale social forces (such
as institutions and cultures) and their intersections with
the individual and small groups. In addition, students explore
the connections between historical processes and contemporary
social issues. Social scientific inquiry uses a combination
of conventional scientific methods and humanistic, qualitative
approaches. Courses in this category are typically, but not
exclusively, offered in American studies, anthropology, economics,
government, history, and sociology.
In culture-centered inquiry, students learn that culturally
based perspectives and values are not universal and in so
doing enhance their ability to interact with persons from
diverse cultural backgrounds. Students fulfill this requirement
by completing one course in a foreign language, and one course
designated as either non-Western culture or cultural diversity
study.
Foreign Literature and Language:
Students expand their use of
a foreign language or their understanding of the literature
of that language by studying in its non-translated form. A
student may choose a course (by placement) from the literature
and language courses offered by the Department of Classics
or the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, excluding
courses in translation.
and either
Non-Western Culture:
Students investigate a way of life and a set
of cultural assumptions significantly different from Western
perspectives. In these courses, students examine the social,
political, literary, aesthetic, or linguistic arrangements
of cultures.
or
Cultural Diversity Study:
Students investigate the interaction
of culturally distinct peoples within a given sociopolitical
context. These courses may focus on diversity in the United
States or on intercultural relations in other contexts. However,
at least one of the groups examined will have non-Western
origins.
The core curriculum described so far provides the foundation
that students need in order to choose a major appropriate to their
academic and career interests. This choice usually occurs
at the end of the sophomore year, allowing time for students
to explore a variety of major and minor options. Skidmore
offers the bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees
in more than sixty areas, including traditional liberal arts
disciplines, paraprofessional fields, interdepartmental combinations,
and interdisciplinary programs. Qualified students may construct
a self-determined major when their educational interests lie
outside Skidmore’s established majors. All areas of concentration
at Skidmore, including those most oriented toward careers
and professions, thrive within a liberal arts and humanistic
environment. Students electing two majors must plan course
selections very carefully and should seek assistance from
a faculty advisor as early as possible.
The Honors Forum offers a supportive intellectual community
for all highly motivated Skidmore students, and especially
encourages the academic aspirations of first-year and second-year
students. The “forum,” as the name suggests, is
intended as a structure for organizing and promoting the common
interests of an academic community. Some students are invited
to become official members of the Honors Forum, thus constituting
a leadership core for the larger student community.
Designated sections of regular course
offerings and courses developed especially for the Honors
Forum expect a high degree of involvement from participants,
employ more sophisticated materials and pose more complex
questions, and provide an unusually challenging academic
experience. In a typical semester, Honors Forum courses might
be offered in anthropology, chemistry, economics, English,
government, history, literature, mathematics, psychology, and sociology.
Skidmore's long experience in combining liberal arts education with
career preparation has established strong connections between the life
of the mind and the life of practicality and action. This twofold
understanding of higher education is brought to focus through
internships offered for academic credit.
Earning academic credit through an internship can be particularly
rewarding to students as an application of their academic work to
other life situations, as an exercise of their liberal arts skills and
perspectives, and as a bridge between college and career. In recent
years Skidmore students have earned valuable experience and academic
credit in government agencies, retail and industrial organizations,
publishing houses, banks, law firms, radio and television networks,
and art, music, and theater organizations. Internship affiliations can
be arranged by students themselves or in consultation with the Office
of Career Services, or be made available through alumni and friends of
the college.
The Office of the Dean of Studies organizes the internship credit
guidelines and application criteria at Skidmore. An electronic library
of internship opportunities is maintained by the Office of Career
Services. Once they have completed a first semester at Skidmore,
qualified students may apply for internship experience, and academic
credit, during any semester of the academic year, including both
summer sessions. Students will be charged the regular application and
tuition fees as for any other credit-bearing course taken during the
academic year or a summer session at Skidmore.
The course IN100 Exploration Internship is available as an
introductory experience to qualified students in any academic
discipline. IN100 applications are reviewed by the Dean of Studies.
Many departments and programs at Skidmore offer internships at the 299
or 399 level. These opportunities are centered on a specific academic
discipline, are offered at a more advanced level than IN100, and often
carry prerequisites. Grading may be on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory
basis. Consult the course descriptions in the departmental listings
for details.
Scribner Seminar professors serve as faculty mentors and academic
advisors to the first-year students enrolled in their seminars.
Transfer students are assigned to a member of the faculty who serves
as the student's advisor. A student wishing to change his or her
advisor may do so at any time by completing a written application
available in the Dean of Studies Office. A student typically changes
his or her advisors when declaring a major. All students are
encouraged to consult their mentors/advisors about course scheduling,
the college's general academic requirements, and the student's
particular field of interest. Students may seek further advice on
these and other issues from the Dean of Studies Office. This office
also handles questions about leaves of absence, academic standing,
choice of major, internship credit, academic support resources and
services, academic integrity, honors and prizes, student opportunity
funds, graduate fellowships, and other academic opportunities or
difficulties.
