Overview
Individually-Advised Curriculum and Tutorial Programs Help Grinnell College Students ¿MAP¿ Their Future
Grinnell College undergraduates begin their education with a first-year tutorial. Tutorials are taught by professors in every discipline and span more than thirty often off-beat and interdisciplinary topics. Tutorial class sizes are limited to 13 students, and for over thirty-five years have been the foundation of Grinnell's individually-advised curriculum and a favorite course of both professors and incoming students alike.
Tutorials serve three purposes: they are an introduction to college-level writing, thinking, and discussion; they serve as a new-student-acclimation group; and they provide an opportunity to develop a close relationship with a faculty member who serves as the student's adviser. Outside of class, student and adviser work together to create an individual course of study that explores a variety of academic disciplines while developing a focus that will eventually lead to a choice of major. At that point, students may choose a new adviser from their major's discipline.
Even outside of the tutorial, small classes and close relationships with faculty members are the norm at Grinnell - and a strong reason many students are drawn there. The student-faculty ratio is 9:1, average class size is 17, and upper-level courses often enroll only 9 to 13 students. In addition, various one-on-one independent study options are available. Among the most popular is Grinnell's Mentored Advanced Project option, or MAP. These projects are the culmination of a Grinnell education for many students, pairing a student with a faculty member in undertaking a specific research or creative project, perhaps with an interdisciplinary focus.
Grinnell Stresses Global Education and Diversity For Undergraduate Liberal Arts Students
There are about as many four-year, full-time international students on Grinnell College's campus as there are students from its home state of Iowa - just one indication of how seriously the college takes its mission to provide its students with a global perspective. Another measure: more than half of Grinnell's students study abroad at some point during their education.
Maintaining a thriving diversity of thought, culture, and geographic and socioeconomic perspective is a core value at Grinnell. Students of all ethnicities, cultures, language groups, creeds, political beliefs, and religions are not merely welcomed at Grinnell; their presence is celebrated.
The college's Center for International Studies regularly sponsors visits from international lecturers who comment on world affairs, provides travel/study opportunities, sustains a faculty with great international experience and education, and works with other offices on campus that focus on international affairs, international student services, international student admissions, and more.
Grinnell's Diversity Steering Committee develops and coordinates the college's various diversity initiatives. Comprising top faculty members and administrators, the committee makes recommendations to the school¿s president, staff, and students. These initiatives promote and reflect the awareness, understanding, and tolerance of diversity that's evident throughout the campus community, whether with regard to culture, gender orientation, disability, or simply individual choice and expression.
Heading: Student Self-Governance Strengthens Leadership Qualities, While A Commitment To Community Strengthens The World
Student life at Grinnell College is characterized by self-governance, which balances an exceptional freedom of choice with a high degree of accountability to self, community, and world. Community is particularly strong at Grinnell: very few students live off-campus, and then only during their senior year. Dorms are relatively small and house a mix of students in all four class years and in all academic divisions, further minimizing clique-making distinctions.
Volunteer, peer-counselor Student Advisors and professional Residence Life Coordinators further reinforce a sense of community. They encourage dorm-centered activities and events, and provide a listening ear and guidance to students with personal or community-related concerns or ideas.
The result is a campus with relatively few hard-and-fast rules of conduct, but with an unusually high degree of tolerance, consideration, respect, and openness. Any issues that do arise tend to be handled by discussion or student-run mediation.
