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For the Adelaide-based college, see Prescott College, South Australia. Prescott College, a private liberal arts college in Prescott, Arizona, highlights the dramatic educational return on investment when experience is at the center of learning. Tucked into a corner of the town of the same name, Prescott College offers residential and limited-residency BA degrees, a limited-residency MA degree and a limited-residency PhD in Sustainability Education. That dry description tells you nothing about what it really is, however—an evolving experiment in rejecting hierarchical thinking for collaboration and teamwork as the cornerstone of learning. Narrative evaluations. No barriers. Limited bureaucracy. No summa or magna or “best in show” ribbons. Just a peripatetic community of lively intellects and fearless explorers whose connecting threads are a passion for social justice and the environment, and a keen sense of adventure. The College is known for its hands-on approach to learning and high student activist enrollment. Students in the community-based Adult Degree and Graduate programs are able to continue living and working in their home communities as they design their own programs with the assistance of faculty, mentors, and/or advisors, and carry out projects in their home communities in fulfillment of their degree requirements. Residential undergraduate studetns live and attend classes in Prescott. Prescott College has received the highest academic rating in the state of Arizona for several years running from The Princeton Review. In 1965 the Ford Foundation challenged the country’s most innovative educators to come together and design an “ideal college for the future that would prepare students for contributing in an ever changing, and ever faster moving, world.” Prescott College is the result. Since its opening in 1966, more than 9,000 students have enjoyed its highly individual philosophy of higher education with its mandate to incorporate experiential learning into every course. This is an educational institution that puts students at the center in everything it does and is. Imagine what intellectual fireworks can happen when quirky and eclectic minds are given the green light at every turn! Although the school is best known for environmental studies programs like Agroecology, Conservation Biology, Earth Science, Ecological Design, Environmental Policy, Geography, Human Ecology, Marine Studies, Natural History and Ecology, and Environmental Education there are also programs in Adventure Education, Outdoor Experiential Education, Wilderness Leadership, Adventure-Based Environmental Education, Outdoor Program Administration, Adventure-Based Tourism, Cultural and Regional Studies, Religion and Philosophy, Sustainability Education, Peace Studies, Political Economy, Latin American Studies, Spanish Language and Literature, International Studies, Women’s Studies, Human Development, Education, Elementary and Secondary Teacher Certification, Writing and Literature, Performing Arts, Photography, Creative Writing, Visual Arts, Psychology, Counseling Psychology, Therapeutic Use of Adventure Education, Ecopsychology, and Equine Assisted Mental Health. In keeping with the College’s philosophy that students develop valuable life skills from independent living, most residential students live in off-campus housing, however the College provides a limited amount of on-campus housing for 1st-time freshmen. Limited residency students continue to live and work in their home communities while attending in-residence colloquia at the Prescott Campus several times each year. Nearly a third of the College's Adult Degree Program students live in the Tucson, AZregion and are served by the College's local Center.
Prescott College Consortium Relationships To expand the diversity of study opportunities for residential students the College is part of two major college consortiums and has many stand alone student exchange relationships with other like minded institutions that permit students to study as visitors at other institutions while maintaining enrollment and, usually, paying tuition at Prescott. Prescott’s consortium relationships include the Eco League, a six college consortium of colleges with strong environmental studies programs: Antioch College, Alaska Pacific University, Green Mountain College, Northland College, and College of the Atlantic; and the Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning (CIEL), an eleven college consortium of colleges of so-called “alternative” colleges and universities: Alverno College, Berea College, Daemen College, The Evergreen State College, Fairhaven College at Western Washington University, Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, Hampshire College (a member of the Five-College Consortium, which includes Amherst College , Smith College , Mt. Holyoke College and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Johnson C. Smith University, New College of Florida, and Pitzer College (a member of the Claremont Colleges, a college consortium, located in Southern California which also includes Pomona College, Claremont Graduate University, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, and the Keck Graduate Institute). Prescott’s stand alone student exchange relationships include: Telemark College in Norway, the ECOSA Institute (an Ecological Design Institute located in Prescott, Arizona), the SOS Conservation Project, and Sail Caribbean. Experiential_learning|Experiential and Field-Based Education Education at Prescott College is based on the fundamental idea that the student is in control of his or her learning, and learns best through self-direction, experiential learning, and real-life experience. To provide that real-life experience many of our many of the courses in our residential undergraduate program have strong field components and some are conducted entirely in the field. This approach to education is both engaging and academically rigorous as students are expected to assume an active role as they travel, mesh with local communities, conduct field studies, participate in faculty research, and otherwise apply their knowledge to the understanding of real problems. Our faculty members are guides and coaches, attempting to help the students acquire the knowledge they want, and the institution is organized to support this form of education. Prescott College is not simply an alternative; it is an entirely different way to help support learners in their search for knowledge – an educational process that favors understanding a world of interconnected systems over learning isolated facts. Prescott College is organized to allow students to be vigorously involved in their studies. The College believes it is essential to help learners learn in whatever modality that person finds most efficient Prescott faculty are experiential educators who understand that focus on individualized learning experience. Since its inception in the mid-sixties, Prescott College has prided itself on its strong advisor/advisee relationships. Many students apply here after experimenting with higher education at other, usually more traditional, institutions. This is the place where they believe they can flourish, where they will find themselves integral to any class, where their voices will be heard not only in the classroom or field but also in the design and implementation of their academic careers. The College’s educational philosophy emphasizes individualized attention, and the graduation process is not designed primarily for efficiency in the way more traditional college and university processes are. Prescott College is, first and foremost, “for the liberal arts and the environment.” Everything we do and plan and dream is embodied in that phrase. Prescott College believes that the best stewards of the earth and the most effective agents of change are liberally educated citizens. Students are expected to have some experience with and appreciation for various modes of understanding the world: historical, literary, artistic, scientific, social, physical, and spiritual and to cultivate political, cultural, and ecological awareness, as well as communication and mathematical skills. Prescott College is also a competence-driven college. Students don’t just accumulate credits, get their tickets punched, and graduate. Students are expected to be literate in their fields of study, to have mastered the methodologies of a discipline, to have applied and integrated and personalized their learning, and to have demonstrated competence through the design and execution of a senior project. Quotes “Our youngest daughter received her diploma there this May. We expected it to be a different take on old traditions when the Star Wars theme replaced Pomp and Circumstance, but no one in our large and overeducated family expected to be so inspired and engaged by a six-hour ceremony. Among the 20 or so present from the family, we have a lot of advanced degrees from a lot of big-name schools. We came expecting a freewheeling and not very disciplined “alternative school”; we left inspired and downright envious of such a challenging and joyful approach to learning.”- Roxie Bacon, former President of the State Bar of Arizona and mother of Prescott College 2006 Alumna Emily Ross Bacon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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