Connected Learning at Wooster provides a great springboard to life and work for every student
Wooster seeks to provide each and every student with an education that is both globally engaged and locally grounded, rich in opportunities for collaboration, civic engagement, professional exploration, and leadership. At Wooster, you will connect what you learn in your major and across disciplines with opportunities on campus, in the local community, and around the world to ensure you are exploring both intellectual passions and professional aspirations.
Areas of Study
Wooster students choose from over 100 areas of study
Mentored Research (Independent Study)
Every student completes a significant research project or creative expression.
Pathways
New optional opportunities allow students to bring together academic interests, hands-on experiences, and career exploration for credit.
Experiential Learning
Learning in all its forms is central to a Wooster education.
Your journey begins with First-Year Seminar, a writing-intensive course that will exercise your intellect and sharpen your critical faculties. In a class of no more than 15 students, with a professor who’s also your academic adviser, you’ll approach a wide range of texts, questioning and analyzing them to tease out meaning, and then formulating arguments through extensive writing and discussion. Each seminar invites students to engage in a set of issues, questions, or ideas that can be illuminated by the interdisciplinary perspectives of the liberal arts. Through FYS, students develop the abilities, and especially the writing skills, that are essential to critical thinking. These abilities include interpreting complex texts, constructing an argument, supporting the argument with evidence, defending the argument orally, and critiquing multiple perspectives, including one’s own.
Gain perspective
To ensure that you’re conversant with forms of inquiry and discourse in a range of disciplines, you’ll select courses in three areas: arts and humanities, history and social sciences, and mathematical and natural sciences. You’ll also gain insight into other cultures through courses in global and cultural perspectives, religious perspectives and foreign language.
Choose an Area of Study
Once you select a major, you’ll engage with the scholarship of that field, develop an understanding of its particular methodologies, and prepare to participate in the creation of knowledge yourself. You also may choose to add a minor or one of Wooster’s new Pathways that merge experiential learning with coursework to your major. You’ll find numerous opportunities to work with faculty on undergraduate research projects (as early as the second semester of your first year), participate in internships, or study abroad.
Put it all together
It all culminates in your senior Independent Study (I.S.) project. Working one-on-one with a faculty adviser over the course of a year, you’ll conduct research, create art, or shape a performance that demonstrates your understanding of a discipline or field and your ability to communicate that knowledge to others.