Lafayette College - Overview
A Quality Education
Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, offers students a quality education with exceptional strengths in science, technology, and engineering, which complement its strong commitment to the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Lafayette's approach to teaching and learning goes well beyond traditional classroom methods. Through exceptional faculty and active learning experiences in small-group seminars, student-centered team projects, independent study, student-faculty research, study abroad, and internships, students have the opportunity to cross academic boundaries in the arts, sciences, and engineering.
Lafayette faculty understands what students must learn and experience to have an edge in a complex 21st-century global economy. That is why they provide innovative courses that combine multiple perspectives on solving problems and apply what is learned in the classroom to real-world problems like developing sustainable renovation programs for houses in an aging Easton neighborhood.
Programs of Study at Lafayette College
A combination of programs and characteristics make Lafayette College truly distinctive. It provides total focus on undergraduate academics - there are no graduate students to teach classes in place of professors. Lafayette is one of the few undergraduate colleges to offer the best in the liberal arts and engineering, and the college is committed to increasing the size of the faculty to provide more hands-on learning experiences in small-class settings.
Lafayette College offers unparalleled opportunities to do significant undergraduate research with faculty, resulting in published papers and conference presentations. Its internship opportunities are outstanding - an attribute afforded by Lafayette's proximity to New York City.
The college has an ideal size of 2,400 students with an average class size of 17 students. It offers NCAA Division I programs in 23 varsity sports and commits to providing an education to its student that will help them get jobs or gain admission to top graduate schools immediately after graduation.
Lafayette Offers 45 Majors Across Four Academic Divisions
Lafayette students can pursue a Bachelor of Arts in 32 fields and a Bachelor of Science in nine fields of science and four fields of engineering. If a student's interests span different disciplines, they are encouraged to create their own major.
Interdisciplinary minor programs are a strength at Lafayette, including Africana studies; architectural studies; Asian studies; biotechnology/bioengineering; classical civilization; computational methods; environmental science; film; health care and society; Jewish studies; Latin American and Caribbean studies; Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern studies; and women's and gender studies.
In addition, more than half the students in each year's graduating class have studied abroad in programs led by Lafayette faculty during a semester or interim session or in Lafayette-affiliated programs of a semester or a year in duration.
Powerful Resources and an Exceptional, Growing Faculty
Lafayette offers the powerful resources of a large university and the personal, individualized advantages of a smaller college. Students say what makes Lafayette special is the personal attention of faculty and the breadth of experiential-learning opportunities focused exclusively on them. In a recent survey, 83 percent of its students said that faculty "care about my ideas and contributions."
Teaching and mentoring are the top priorities of Lafayette's full-time faculty members, and they are committed to each student's success. All senior faculty members teach beginning as well as advanced classes. Classes are small; about two-thirds of all classes have 19 or fewer students.
Lafayette College has invested more than $200 million in academic, residential, and recreational facilities recently, including a science center, an expansion and transformation of the main library, a center for psychology and neuroscience, a thorough modernization of the engineering complex, a center for the visual arts, new and renovated residence halls, and a center for intramural and recreational sports.
Unparalleled Research Opportunities
In the EXCEL Scholars program, students receive a stipend for serving as research assistants to faculty. Each year, more than 150 students collaborate one-on-one with faculty members on research projects, applying what they've learned in the classroom to specific problems. Working part-time during the regular semesters and full-time during January's interim session and in the summer, they gain hands-on experience that enhances their undergraduate education and can significantly strengthen their applications for graduate studies and career opportunities.
The Lafayette Campus
Described as one of America's most beautiful campuses, Lafayette College's campus can feel like a home away from home. The college is small enough that students get to know almost everyone, but is still able to offer a wide variety of things to do. Students can participate in more than 250 sports, groups, clubs, and other activities.
Easton is a city of 30,000 people located on the eastern edge of the Lehigh Valley, the third-largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania, with a population of 800,000. Easton's historic, revitalized downtown has restaurants, art galleries, bookstores, craft shops, and the State Theatre Center for the Arts.
Academic, social, cultural, and professional opportunities also abound off-campus, as New York City is a little over an hour's drive away, while Philadelphia is only an hour from Lafayette.