Skidmore College - Overview
A Small, Highly Selective College with Creative Approaches to Undergraduate Education
Founded in 1903, Skidmore College is a highly selective liberal arts college that strives to infuse creativity into all fields of study. The College serves about 2,400 undergraduate students and has an average class size of 17. Skidmore has an 8 to 1 student-to-faculty ratio, and faculty members are devoted to the instruction and mentoring of undergraduates. Skidmore students hail from 47 states and 46 countries.
Traditional, Innovative, and Self-Determined Majors
Traditional majors at Skidmore include art history, classics, economics, management and business, philosophy, and theater. Less traditional majors include environmental studies, exercise science, neuroscience, and law and society.
In Skidmore's self-determined majors program, each student combines two or more disciplines to achieve a clearly developed, coherent course of study not available through existing majors and minors. Recent self-determined majors include arts administration, computational neuroscience, media studies and communications, and the physics and sound of recording.
Science at Skidmore: Research Opportunities and Pre-Professional Programs
In the sciences, Skidmore offers dedicated faculty, hands-on research opportunities, outstanding laboratories and facilities, and annual scholarships in science and mathematics. Student-faculty collaborative research often leads to jointly published articles and student presentations at national meetings.
Skidmore focuses on graduate school preparation, including personalized pre-med advising. In the last decade, 75 percent of Skidmore grads who applied to medical schools and 88 percent who applied to dental and veterinary schools were accepted.
North Woods, a 250-acre area on Skidmore's campus, provides a living laboratory for field study in biology, environmental studies, and geosciences.
Skidmore offers dual-degree engineering programs with Dartmouth College and Clarkson University; a dual-degree program with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and the Semester in Environmental Science program with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
The Fine Arts at Skidmore
True to its motto, "Creative Thought Matters," Skidmore puts special emphasis on fine arts. The college has academic departments of art history, dance, music, theater, and studio art.
A recent sampling of fine arts courses included Acting Shakespeare; Addressing the Body: European Fashion, Renaissance to the Present; Baroque Seminar; the Beatles, a seminar; Carving Processes in Wood; Choreography; Costume Design; Dance for the Child; Duke Ellington; History of American Theater; Jewelry and Metals; Playwriting; Sixties British Songwriters; Textile Surface Design; and Tibetan Art.
Skidmore's special fine arts programs include a pre-college program in liberal and studio arts, the Skidmore Jazz Institute, and summer programs in dance, flute, studio arts, theater, and writing.
An Artistic Array of Studios and Galleries
The Saisselin Art Building provides studios spaces for ceramics, digital media, fiber art, graphic design, jewelry, metals, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture.
Galleries on campus include the student-run Case Gallery and the Schick Art Gallery, which displays contemporary exhibitions borrowed from museums, galleries, and private collections.
Performance Centers at Skidmore
The college's Arthur Zankel Music Center is a new 54,000-square-foot facility with an award-winning design. It has a 600-seat recital hall, as well as classrooms and rehearsal spaces. Skidmore's Dance Center has spacious dance studios and a fully equipped dance theater with adjoining dressing rooms. Both student dancers and visiting professional dance companies perform at Skidmore throughout the year.
The Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater Building houses mainstage and black box theaters, as well as rehearsal studios, scene and paint shops, and a costume area.
The Filene Recital Hall is a 240-seat hall, which offers concerts by Skidmore students, faculty, and ensembles, as well as a roster of world-renowned performers who appear under the Filene Concert Series and the Sterne Virtuoso Series.
Skidmore Studies Around the World
Skidmore has academic programs in Alcala, Spain; Beijing; London; and Paris. Students in Skidmore's Shakespeare Programme study in London and Stratford-on-Avon.
In addition, Skidmore sponsors faculty-led travel seminars in locations around the world. These seminars allow students to accompany faculty members as they explore a focused topic that uses the destination as a classroom. The college offers a different set of seminars each year.
Past seminars have included Chocolate and Gold: Culture and Politics in Ghana; From Marx to Coca Cola: Transitions in Poland and Germany; Hindu Religion and Art in India; Jane Austen in Bath, England; and Tropical Field Ecology in Costa Rica.
Intercollegiate Sports at Skidmore
Skidmore's intercollegiate sports program includes men's and women's basketball, crew, lacrosse, soccer, swimming and diving, and tennis; men's baseball, golf, and ice hockey; and women's field hockey, horseback riding, softball, and volleyball.
The Master's Program in Liberal Studies at Skidmore
Master's students work closely with faculty advisers to craft individualized courses of study that focus on specific areas of interest. After taking a weeklong introductory seminar on campus, students typically complete the rest of their coursework as independent studies via distance learning. Master's students study with faculty from Skidmore and other top colleges and universities, with independent scholars, and with visual and performing artists.
Recent master's students pursued studies that focused on ways that businesses confront their social responsibilities; the influence of the American frontier on 19th-century culture and politics; and relationships among diet, exercise, mood, metabolism, and lifestyle.
Saratoga Springs: A Bustling College Town in Upstate New York
A 10-minute walk from campus takes Skidmore students to the heart of downtown Saratoga Springs. This bustling college town offers arts galleries, clubs, funky shops and major retail stores, coffeehouses, bistros, and restaurants.
Legendary folk club Caffe Lena, where Don McLean wrote "American Pie" and Bob Dylan performed, is a student favorite. So is Esperantos, co-founded by a Skidmore psychology professor. The Saratoga Performing Arts Center is the summer home to the New York City Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The center is also a performance venue for top rock and jazz musicians.
It takes less than three hours to drive to Boston, New York City, or Montreal from the Skidmore campus. The Adirondacks, Berkshires, and Green Mountains are close by, providing opportunities for rock- and mountain-climbing, white-water rafting, hiking, kayaking, downhill skiing, and mountain biking.
The community's historical features include famed mineral springs, a Revolutionary War battlefield, and the nation's oldest thoroughbred racetrack.
The Tang Teaching Museum
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery is sited dramatically on Skidmore's scenic campus. The college seeks to make Tang exhibitions, collections, and programs a significant aspect of the Skidmore curriculum. Exhibitions feature contemporary art, but regularly address other disciplines, including the natural and social sciences, performing arts, and humanities. Tang public events and educational programs serve both the college and its community.