The Academic Program

The College provides an undergraduate curriculum that is rigorous, balanced, and contemporary. Students select from three baccalaureate degrees and forty-one majors. These are administered through traditional academic departments and a variety of interdisciplinary programs.

In the spring of 2003, the faculty conducted the most significant curriculum reform in nearly forty years. The revised curriculum, which took effect for students entering in the fall of 2004, is designed to encourage connectedness in learning, self-reflection, and contemporary content, while opening up core requirements to interdisciplinary study.

The Gettysburg curriculum's overarching goals are to "develop lifelong learners who are able to acquire and process information and ideas in multiple ways (multiple inquiries), are integrative thinkers, are skilled in communication, and are prepared for the responsibilities of local and global citizenship." These goals are captured in four general learning objectives, each of which present students with myriad paths to completion:

• Multiple Inquiries: students take courses that introduce them to the ways in which various disciplines consider and address issues and questions.
• Integrative Thinking: students develop the ability to integrate ideas and information from diverse perspectives by taking a formal reasoning course, pursuing a self-designed course of interdisciplinary study, and completing a senior capstone experience.
• Effective Communication:first-year courses introduce students to college-level oraland written communication skills, and students learn the communication standards of a particular field in their chosen majors.
• Local and Global Citizenship:students prepare for citizenship by learning about various forms of diversity and inequality, by considering the interconnectedness of society, science, and technology, and by studying a second language.

More information about the curriculum.

A vibrant First-Year Seminar program is the academic centerpiece of the student's first term. Although these seminars are not required, 77% of students request to enroll in a seminar. Faculty offer intriguing seminar topics that provide a rich array of choices. Students in a First-Year Seminar are housed together to create a learning community, and some seminars are taught in specially equipped seminar rooms in residence halls. 

Believing that a global perspective is a requirement for a contemporary, liberal arts education, the College has made a commitment to international education. Over half of Gettysburg's students now study abroad for at least one full semester, and the College has strengthened and expanded its affiliations, student advising capacity, and the integration of these programs within the curriculum. It has added new programs and courses focusing on under-represented areas of the curriculum, and today there are more than 200 study-abroad options for Gettysburg students.

Currently, the most popular programs by number of majors are: Management, Psychology, Political Science, History, English, Health Sciences, Environmental Studies, Biology, Sociology and Philosophy. The most popular minors are Education, Spanish, Writing, Civil War Era Studies, Economics, Studio Art & Art History, and Political Science. In addition, some students take advantage of the opportunity of working with faculty to develop a customized major.

In the last decade, several new departments were recognized: Theatre Arts, Environmental Studies, Computer Science, and Asian Studies. New interdisciplinary programs include: Japanese Studies, Civil War Era Studies, Globalization Studies, Neuroscience, and Film Studies. The Gettysburg Semester-an intensive, one-term interdisciplinary study of the Civil War Era provides an exciting learning experience for students from other colleges that is unique to Gettysburg. The Sunderman Conservatory of Music was recently established and adds a more performance-oriented degree to the historically strong music programs of the College.

Departments and programs are each reviewed on a seven-year cycle. In comparison with many peer institutions, this is a rigorous and effective review process that involves self-assessment, external reviewers, written reports and responses, and follow-up activities with the Provost's Office and the Academic Affairs Committee of the College's Board of Trustees.

Accreditation

The College has been accredited by the Middle States Commission of Higher Education (MSCHE) since 1921. The most recent ten-year reaccreditation review occurred during the 2003-04 academic year. The chosen focus of the review was Assessment. The College adopted a Learning Outcomes Assessment Plan that contains three components-student learning in the classroom, student learning in co-curricular programs, and institutional effectiveness. The plan is coordinated by the Office of Institutional Analysis. This office assists the Provost's Office in its work with the Committee on Learning Assessment (COLA), which focuses on learning in the classroom, the Division of College Life in its work with the Co-curricular Learning Assessment Group (CLAG), which focuses on student learning out of the classroom, and the Committee on Institutional Effectiveness, the College's oversight committee. The College is currently preparing its five-year Periodic Review Report for MSCHE.

Service Learning

The College has been an innovator and leader in service learning. The Center for Public Service, called by one reviewer "a national treasure," provides students with myriad opportunities to participate in service learning, enabling them to make a difference in their immediate community and the world beyond. Gettysburg students contributed almost 28,000 hours of service during the past year in an array of projects ranging from international sites (Nicaragua and Mexico) to domestic sites (including Washington, D.C.; Violet, LA; the Apache Reservation in San Carlos, Arizona; and in Gettysburg and Adams County). Each year, up to 25 faculty engage 350-550 students in 16-35 service-learning courses in a variety of disciplines. 

Research Opportunities

All students at the College are encouraged from their first through senior years to participate in a variety of educational opportunities designed to build upon previously acquired knowledge and strengths to help them advance to the next stage of their intellectual development. One of the best examples of these kinds of opportunities is an intentional collaboration between a student and a faculty mentor on a research or creative activity project. Gettysburg College excels in this category. For each of the past three summers, five to ten students have been generously funded by the Andrew E. Mellon Foundation to undertake a research project with a faculty mentor. These projects have ranged from traditional lab research to developing an online journal by students and for students in the foreign languages. The location of the research is not limited to campus, however, as three of this summer's Mellon Scholars conducted field research in Zimbabwe, Nepal, and Nicaragua.

In addition, students who excel in these learning partnerships gain a competitive advantage in graduate school admission and in seeking nationally competitive scholarships. In the last five years, students have received a Rhodes Scholarship, six Fulbright grants, three Goldwater Scholarships, a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, two DAAD undergraduate research awards to conduct research in Germany, a State Department Critical Language Scholarship, and an NOAA Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship, among others. Gettysburg students are accepted to some of the most prestigious graduate programs including Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Oxford.

Eisenhower Institute

In 2005, the College and the Eisenhower Institute (EI) formalized a long-standing relationship. The EI, a nonpartisan, nonprofit legacy organization of the late former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is an institution dedicated to the study and encouragement of public service, leadership, and civic engagement by future generations. Through its relationship with Gettysburg, the EI is able to provide students with access to leaders at the highest levels of national and international government through distinctive programs on leadership and public policy. Further, with offices in both Washington, D.C. and Gettysburg, the EI serves as a curricular and programmatic bridge between the liberal arts environment and the federal government's seat of operation "inside the Beltway." The EI is governed by a Board of Directors and has both a campus advisory council and a public advisory board.