Shimer College
Encyclopedia
Shimer College is a very small, private, undergraduate liberal arts
college in Chicago
, Illinois, in the United States. Founded by Frances Wood Shimer
in 1853 in the frontier town of Mt. Carroll, Illinois, it was a women's school for most of its first century. It joined with the University of Chicago
(U. of C.) in 1896, and became one of the first junior college
s in the country in 1907. In 1950, it became a co-educational four-year college, took the name Shimer College, and adopted the Hutchins Plan of Great Books and Socratic
seminars then in practice at the U. of C. The U. of C. relationship ended in 1958. Shimer enjoyed national recognition and strong growth in the 1960s but was forced by financial problems to abandon its campus in 1978. The college then moved to an improvised campus in the Chicago suburb of Waukegan
, remaining there until 2006, when it moved to the campus
of the Illinois Institute of Technology
(IIT) in the Bronzeville neighborhood in the Douglas community area
of Chicago.
Classes are exclusively small seminars in which students discuss original source material rather than read textbooks. The core curriculum, a sequence of courses in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and integrated studies
, makes up two thirds of the course work required for a degree. Shimer has offered a study abroad
program in Oxford, England, since 1963 and a weekend program for working adults since 1981. Applicants to the school are evaluated on their academic potential, based primarily on an essay. No minimum grades or test scores are required. The Early Entrant Program
, in place since 1950, allows students who have not yet completed high school to start college early. Shimer has the third highest rate of graduates who complete doctorate degrees of any liberal arts college in the country. Fifty percent of students go on to graduate study; twenty percent complete doctoral degrees.
Shimer resides on the IIT main campus, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places
in 2005. There, students maintain Shimer College traditions but also participate in IIT student life. Shimer practices democratic self-governance to an extent that it states "is rare among institutions of higher education". Since 1977, the college has been governed internally by faculty, staff, and students working through a structure of committees and an egalitarian deliberative body called the Assembly. Shimer enrolled 119 full-time students in 2011. Notable alumni include poets, authors, political theorists, experimental artists, and computing pioneers.
, Frances Wood
and her friend Cindarella Gregory, to come west to the prairie to teach, and on May 11, 1853, the new seminary opened with 11 students in a local church. Failing to raise enough money locally, the incorporators borrowed enough money to construct a building in 1854; discouraged by the financial picture, however, they sold the school to Wood and Gregory, who borrowed the money to buy it. In 1857, Wood married Henry Shimer
, a mason to whom the seminary owed money, who gave Wood, and later the school, his name.
In 1864, the school began accepting only female students, not on principle, but because the school was out of space. Wishing to ensure the long-term survival of the school, in 1896 Frances Shimer reached an agreement with the University of Chicago
(U. of C.), under which the school became the Frances Shimer Academy of the University of Chicago, affiliated loosely with the Baptist Church. Then Frances Shimer retired to Florida, never setting foot on campus again; she died in 1901. William Rainey Harper
, then president of the U. of C., was the first to champion the idea of the Junior College in the United States, and in 1907, Shimer became one of the first schools to offer a junior college program. The two-year junior college program, which operated alongside the original preparatory program, was accredited in 1920.
The college suffered a severe decline in enrollment and subsequent financial hardship during and after the Great Depression
, which it survived — under five different presidents — in part by reorganizing the six-year preparatory program into a four-year junior college program and in part through deep salary reductions. In 1943, Shimer president Albin Bro invited the Department of Education at the U. of C. to evaluate the entire college community. The 77 recommendations they returned would become the basis for Shimer's transformation from a conservative finishing school to a nontraditional, co-educational four-year college.
The school was renamed Shimer College in 1950, and adopted the Great Books
curriculum then in place at the U. of C. The U. of C. connection was dissolved in 1958, following the U. of C.'s decision to abandon the Great Books plan and a narrowly averted Shimer bankruptcy in 1957. The Great Books program at Shimer lived on, and the school achieved national recognition and rapid growth in enrollment through the 1960s. In 1963, a Harvard Educational Review
article named Shimer as one of 11 colleges with an "ideal intellectual climate". A 1966 article in the education journal Phi Delta Kappa
n reported that Shimer "present[ed] impressive statistical evidence that their students are better prepared for graduate work in the arts and sciences and in the professions than those who have specialized in particular areas."
In the late 1960s, Shimer experienced a period of internal unrest known as the "Grotesque Internecine Struggle," involving disputes over curriculum changes, the extent to which student behavior should be regulated, and allegedly inadequate fundraising by president Joe Mullin
; half of the faculty and a large portion of the student body departed as a result. As financial problems worsened, the school's survival was in doubt. The trustees voted to close the college at the end of 1973, but the school was saved by a desperate fund-raising campaign led by students and faculty. Three times in the next four years, the trustees voted to shut the school down, only to later vote to reopen it. Finally filing for bankruptcy in 1977, the trustees, in the words of board chair Barry Carroll, "put responsibility for the school's continuing on the shoulders of a very dedicated faculty of 12 and students who volunteered", under the leadership of Don Moon
, a nuclear engineer and Episcopal priest who had joined the faculty in 1967. Accepting an invitation from the city of Waukegan, Illinois
, a declining industrial suburb north of Chicago, the faculty and 62 students borrowed trucks and moved the college into two "run down" homes over Christmas break in 1978. Classes began on schedule in January 1979. The college emerged from bankruptcy in 1980, but lost its accreditation as a result of its financial problems. Over the next 25 years, Shimer purchased 12 of the surrounding homes to form a makeshift campus and slowly progressed towards financial stability. By 1988, enrollment had climbed from a low of 40 to 114 and income exceeded expenses. Shimer won a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH) in 1991, with the help of then NEH chair and core-curriculum advocate Lynne Cheney
; the grant helped the school raise US$2 million and revitalized fund raising. That same year, Shimer's accreditation was restored by the Higher Learning Commission
of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools
.
In 2006, Shimer, again struggling with stagnating enrollment, accepted an invitation to move, this time to the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology
(IIT) in Chicago, under a long-term lease agreement; the two institutions kept separate faculties and boards. Shimer attracted national attention in 2009 when the school became embroiled in "a battle over what some saw as a right-wing
attempt to take over its board and administration". Students, organized under the name Shimer Student Alliance, protested at the February 2010 Board meeting. Following votes of no confidence by the faculty, the alumni, and the Assembly (Shimer's democratic governing body), president Thomas Lindsay stepped down in April 2010. He was succeeded by Ed Noonan, a Chicago-area architect and longtime Trustee of the college.
, who founded a Socratic
seminar using great books at Columbia University
in 1919. This seminar profoundly impacted Erskine's colleague Mortimer Adler
, who came to believe that the purpose of education was to engage student's minds "in the study of individual works of merit ... accompanied by a discussion of the ideas, the values, and the forms embodied in such products of human art." Robert Maynard Hutchins, who led the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1951, brought Adler to the U. of C. and wholeheartedly embraced his ideas. In 1931, Hutchins implemented the "Chicago Plan", which later became known as the "Hutchins Plan".
Shimer, which had been affiliated with the U. of C. since 1896, adopted the Hutchins plan entirely in 1950, including the Chicago syllabi, comprehensive examinations, and several of their instructors. The U. of C. abandoned the program after Hutchins left in 1951, but Shimer maintained it, and has done so through the decades that followed.
The 200-book reading list remains largely faithful to the original Hutchins plan, but new works are judiciously added to the core curriculum; these have included voices originally overlooked in the formation of the canon. It now includes, for example, works by Martin Luther King, Jr.
, Carol Gilligan
, Frantz Fanon
, and Michel Foucault
, along with other contemporary authors. Readings are organized by broad historical and philosophical themes, rather than conventional fields. Small seminars are the sole form of instruction; even the natural sciences are taught via discussion. The classes, which are composed of on average eight and no more than twelve students, read and discuss only original source material. Faculty are referred to as "facilitators" and are always addressed by first name. Teachers facilitate discussion but may talk little in the learning process, which Shimer calls "shared inquiry", in which "the text is the teacher, and thus the faculty member's role is to facilitate interaction between the text and the students."
s with concentrations in humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Two-thirds of the courses required for graduation are mandatory core courses. The remainder are electives, three-quarters of which must be in the student's chosen area of concentration. Electives offer in-depth work in a particular field, or basic skills instruction in languages and mathematics, and are often offered as "tutorials" with only one or two students per course. Students may cross-register for courses at IIT and the Vandercook College of Music
, also located on the IIT campus; courses available in this fashion include laboratory science, advanced mathematics, and music history and theory.
studies. The Basic Studies courses, numbered one and two, are generally taken during the first two years, and the Advanced Studies courses, numbered three and four, during the final two years. The Advanced Integrative Studies courses, numbered five and six, are taken in the senior year.
The humanities core begins with the study of visual art and music and progresses through literature, philosophy and theology. It culminates with the final course, "Critical Evaluation in the Humanities," which seeks to unify the Humanities courses by approaching all of the areas of the Humanities theoretically through critical evaluation of significant works of the 18th century and later. The course includes Martin Buber
's I and Thou
, Immanuel Kant
's Critique of Judgment, Friedrich Nietzsche
's Beyond Good and Evil
, and Søren Kierkegaard
's Fear and Trembling
.
The social sciences sequence begins with study of the individual and society in the first course, proceeds to classical political thought in the second, then modern social and political theory in the third, and concludes with the "Theories of Social Inquiry" course, which focuses on statistical and interpretive methods in sociology, linguistic
theory, and 20th century social thought, through works like Clifford Geertz
's The Interpretation of Cultures, Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed
, Michel Foucault
's Discipline and Punish
, and Karl Mannheim
's Ideology and Utopia.
The natural sciences core studies science as it has developed historically, beginning with the presocratic philosophers of the 6th century BC and the theory of atoms in the first course; evolution
, genetics
, and animal behavior in the second; optics
and the theory of relativity
in the third; and concluding with the study of quantum physics and molecular biology
. The natural science reading list includes Albert Einstein
’s Relativity, Isaac Newton
’s Opticks
, Richard Feynman
’s QED
, Antoine Lavoisier
’s Elements of Chemistry
, and Charles Darwin
’s Origin of Species.
The first basic integrative studies course teaches the fundamental skills in close reading and argumentation required to work with original source texts. In the second course, logic and mathematics are studied in terms of the development of geometry and axiomatic system
s in ancient and modern times. The advanced integrative studies courses, in which students explore connections between the course texts and those they have studied in other courses, are the capstone of the Shimer curriculum. The readings are arranged chronologically in a unified, full-year sequence to demonstrate their historical relationships, beginning with the ancient epic poems The Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer
's Iliad
and concluding with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
's Faust
and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
's Reason in History.
Students must pass at least two comprehensive examinations to graduate. Each comprehensive examination involves several days of reading and writing, and may include an oral component as well. After completing the Basic Studies courses, all students must pass the Basic Studies Comprehensive Examination to continue on to higher level courses. After completing the Advanced Studies courses, students must pass at least one Area Studies Comprehensive Examination, usually in their area of concentration.
The academic experience culminates with the Senior Thesis. Completed during the course of the student's fourth year, it usually takes the form of an analytical or expository essay, but may be a piece of original fiction, poetry, a performance, or a work of visual art. Students are encouraged to defend their theses orally and the public is invited to these defenses.
Shimer first offered a year of study abroad, in Paris
, in 1961 and has held the program biennially in Oxford
, England, since 1963. The Shimer-in-Oxford program allows eight to fifteen students to spend either one or two semesters in Oxford with a Shimer professor. The students, who are in their third and fourth years, take one course from the core curriculum each term and the remainder of their work as individual or very small group tutorials with academics from in and around the University of Oxford
in subjects the students select themselves. The Shimer-in-Oxford program is now affiliated with the Oxford Study Abroad Programme, founded in 1985, which allows students to share housing with students from Oxford University and other American colleges.
The Teaching Fellows Program offers a graduate
-level Great Books course designed for kindergarten
through 12th grade school teachers. Shimer does not award graduate degrees, but teachers earn professional development
credit through the program. The program complements traditional education courses by providing the background knowledge required for teachers to give more content-rich instruction. The program was developed in conjunction with the Core Knowledge Foundation
, which was founded in 1986 by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., author of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, to promote a common core of learning in elementary school
education.
The Great Books + Law program, launched in 2007, is offered in conjunction with the Chicago-Kent College of Law
(the Law School of the Illinois Institute of Technology). It allows students to count their first year of law school towards their Shimer degree and receive their J.D.
in a total of five years instead of seven. A joint program has also been operated since 2009 with Harold Washington College
(HWC), one of the very few community colleges
to offer a Great Books program. The program allows HWC students to take one Shimer course, and is meant to encourage students to transfer to Shimer to complete their bachelor's degree.
, standardized college admissions tests widely used in the U.S., are 28 (at the 92nd percentile
) and 1917 (at the 90th percentile), respectively.
Shimer's Early Entrant program
, which admits students who have not yet graduated from high school, was first launched in 1950. The program has been supported since then by the Ford Foundation
, the Carnegie Foundation
and others. Students enter after the 10th or 11th grade (around age 16 or 17), and follow the same curriculum as all other students. The college will consider the application of any interested student, stressing motivation, willingness to learn, and intellectual curiosity as the most important qualifications. Shimer also actively encourages applications from home-schooled
students, and makes special accommodations for their credentials (for example, their lack of transcripts
). In 2008, 16 percent of new students were early entrants or home-schooled students of a similar age.
In 2009–2010, full-time tuition and fees were $21,000 and on-campus room and board was $12,000. Ninety-one percent of undergraduates received financial aid; the average aid package was $10,594.
(USNWR). In 2006, Shimer was selected as one of the top 50 colleges in All-American Colleges: Top Schools for Conservatives, Old-fashioned Liberals, and People of Faith, which highlights "programs that connect in a special way with the core values of the American founding and the vibrant intellectual traditions of the West". Barron's
named Shimer one of the 300 best buys in college education, noting that "the success of the Shimer curriculum depends a great deal on the knowledge and skill of the faculty facilitators, who receive accolades ranging from 'fantastic' to 'brilliant. In 2000, Insight Magazine named Shimer one of the most politically incorrect
schools in the nation, a list which recognized "colleges that had strong and effective traditional curricula that were not obsessed with the recent educational fads and fetishes such as multiculturalism
and diversity
."
In 2007, Shimer joined a national effort by the Education Conservancy
to boycott participation in college-ranking surveys altogether. Then-President William Craig Rice
said "what Shimer does well—educating ourselves in on-going dialogue with the greatest minds of the past—can’t be captured in the U.S. News measurements." Nearly all Shimer students take the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), a standardized test
for graduate school
admissions, their senior
year, outscoring three of four potential graduate students and "consistently rank among the best in the nation in scores on the verbal and analytical portions of the test", with average analytic scores in the 91st percentile. A 2009 report by The Washington Monthly ranked Shimer third in graduate Ph.D. rate among U.S. liberal arts colleges. In a 1998 study by the University of Wisconsin, Shimer was found to have the highest rate of graduates receiving doctorate degrees of any liberal arts college and the third highest of any undergraduate program in the nation. Studies based on data from the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS) found Shimer to have the seventh-highest alumni Ph.D. rate of all US colleges and universities and the highest rate for Ph.D.s in linguistics.
, and an apartment building. Then-president Rice believed that the new location would attract a wider pool of students and financial contributors, and would offer expanded student services (such as dining and athletic facilities) and opportunities to cooperate academically with IIT.
The 120 acres (48.6 ha) campus is centered around 33rd and State Streets, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the Chicago Loop
, in the historic Bronzeville
neighborhood on the South Side
of Chicago. Also known as the Black Metropolis District, the area is a landmark in African-American history for the many notable African-American people and institutions that thrived there in the mid-20th century. The extant structures from that period were added jointly to the National Register of Historic Places
in 1986, and were designated a Chicago Landmark
in 1998.
The campus on which Shimer resides was designed by modernist
architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
, described by the New York Times as "one of the great figures of 20th-century architecture". Van der Rohe's master plan for the IIT campus was one of the most ambitious projects he ever conceived and the campus, with 20 of his works, is the greatest concentration of his buildings in the world. The campus was landscaped by van der Rohe's close colleague Alfred Caldwell
, one the last representatives of the Prairie School
of landscape architects. In 1976, the American Institute of Architects
named the IIT campus one of the 200 most significant works of architecture in the United States. The IIT Main Campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Shimer occupies 17000 square feet (1,579.4 m²) on the first and second floors of what was formerly the Institute of Gas Technology
complex, under a long-term lease agreement with IIT. The complex, designed by van der Rohe, consists of four buildings built between 1947 and 1955. The South building was home to the first industrial nuclear reactor in the U.S.
Shimer students who choose to live on-campus reside in Gunsaulus Hall, which was converted into a fully furnished apartment-style residence in 2008. Shimer has access to the resources of the Paul V. Galvin Library, IIT's main research library, which contains 1.8 million volumes, more than 25,500 journal titles, and a wide range of digital resources. Shimer's own collection of 15,000 books is also housed in the Galvin library, where it was moved when the school relocated from Waukegan.
Other facilities available to Shimer students include the McCormick Tribune Campus Center
(MTCC), which was designed by internationally acclaimed architect Rem Koolhaas
in 2003.
The facility is the main student activity center, with food courts, a newsstand, lounge areas, conference centers, computer workstations, a bookstore, and an auditorium. Students may also take advantage of the Keating Sports Center, the main athletic complex and home to IIT's varsity team
s. The center offers racquetball courts, bowling, rock climbing, and a wide range of dance and exercise classes along with basketball, volleyball, soccer and other team sports.
responsible for the affairs and the assets of the college. The board delegates authority to the president of the college, who acts as the chief executive administrator, and to the dean of the college and the faculty regarding academic affairs. As of December 2009, the board had 36 members (including three students and two faculty), with a target membership of 40, and was chaired by Christopher B. Nelson, president of St. John's College
.
"As a function of its mission to promote active citizenship", Shimer states that it is "devoted to internal self-governance to an extent that is rare among institutions of higher education." Since 1977, Shimer has been governed internally by a deliberative body called the Assembly. Students and faculty are elected by the community at large to serve on all administrative bodies, including the Board of Trustees, such that "all the top-down bureaucracy of traditional colleges and universities has been replaced by participatory democracy committed to dialogue." The Assembly has no legal authority, but governs, Shimer states, "by virtue of the moral suasion established by communal deliberation". Begun informally in the years immediately prior to the move to Waukegan, the Assembly was formalized by a constitution in 1980. Voting members include all students, faculty, administrators, staff and trustees. Alumni are also members but do not vote. The Assembly advises the administration and conducts the business of the college through a system of committees with purview over administration, academic planning, budgeting, admissions, grievances, financial aid, and quality of life. Committees are composed of faculty, staff, and students elected by the Assembly as a whole.
Shimer students are also represented on, and free to participate in, the IIT Student Government
Association (SGA), which acts as a liaison to the university administration and a forum for express student opinion.
Fraternities
, sororities
and other organizations that promote exclusivity are not allowed and Shimer has no organized clubs or athletic programs of its own. The college has a tradition of community meals, which all are invited to attend, that dates back to the early days on the Waukegan campus, when the whole community would meet for potluck
meals and discuss matters of general interest in gatherings that eventually gave birth to the Assembly. The Orange Horse, Shimer's bi-annual talent show, is a tradition dating back to the 1960s and invites students, faculty, and alumni to read poetry, sing, play music, or tell jokes, individually or in groups.
The Shimer theater program has been under the direction of Humanities Professor Eileen Buchanan since 1967. Buchanan, also a professional actor and director, directs productions that complement the curriculum and offer anyone who wants to participate in theater the chance to do so. Productions in the Chicago location have included Anton Chekhov
's Uncle Vanya
and Eve Ensler
's Vagina Monologues.
In addition to the resources of the MTCC and the athletic facilities, Shimer students are able to take part in the more than 150 student organizations sponsored by IIT, including Liit Magazine, the student-run literary magazine of IIT, and IIT's on-campus radio station, WIIT
, where they can host their own shows.
Shimer students do not necessarily graduate with specific career skills. Most students go on to graduate studies: 50 percent of Shimer graduates earn master's degrees and 21 percent go on to earn doctorates. Another 10 percent attend law school and 5 percent go to business school.
Samuel W. McCall
, a US Representative
from Massachusetts's 8th congressional district
and later Governor of Massachusetts
, attended the Mt. Carroll Seminary in the 1860s. Shimer graduates include poets and authors such as Peter Cooley
, who has sponsored a Shimer College poetry contest for many years, as part of the University and College Poetry Prize Program of the Academy of American Poets
; poet Stephen Dobyns
; Pulitzer Prize
-nominated writer John Norman Maclean
, author of the bestselling Fire on the Mountain
; and award-winning comic book writer and editor Catherine "Cat" Yronwode. Alumni also include notable political theorists such as Arab-Israeli conflict scholar Alan Dowty
and Robert Keohane
, author of the seminal work After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, and political activists such as C. Clark Kissinger
, former National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS) and situationist Ken Knabb
. Computer pioneers Nick Pippenger
and Daniel J. Sandin
went to Shimer, as did experimental artists Laurie Spiegel
and Ken Friedman
.
Other notable alumni include singer/songwriter Phoebe Snow
; medical inventor, Slate
columnist, and Yale University School of Medicine professor Sydney Spiesel
; Whitman College
Classics
professor Elizabeth Vandiver
; author, activist, and internet publisher Heather Corinna
; computer software author Steve Heller; philosopher and chess Grandmaster Jesse Kraai
; and Florida
State Representative Ron Schultz
. Chicago businessman and Shimer graduate Peter Hanig co-organized the international public art exhibit CowParade
in 1999.
Liberal arts
The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...
college in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois, in the United States. Founded by Frances Wood Shimer
Frances Shimer
Frances Shimer , born Frances Ann Wood, was an American educator. She was the founder of the Mount Carroll Seminary, which later became Shimer College, in Mount Carroll, Illinois...
in 1853 in the frontier town of Mt. Carroll, Illinois, it was a women's school for most of its first century. It joined with the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
(U. of C.) in 1896, and became one of the first junior college
Junior college
The term junior college refers to different educational institutions in different countries.-India:In India, most states provide schooling through 12th grade...
s in the country in 1907. In 1950, it became a co-educational four-year college, took the name Shimer College, and adopted the Hutchins Plan of Great Books and Socratic
Socratic method
The Socratic method , named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas...
seminars then in practice at the U. of C. The U. of C. relationship ended in 1958. Shimer enjoyed national recognition and strong growth in the 1960s but was forced by financial problems to abandon its campus in 1978. The college then moved to an improvised campus in the Chicago suburb of Waukegan
Waukegan, Illinois
Waukegan is a city and county seat of Lake County, Illinois. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 87,901. The 2010 population was 89,078. It is the ninth-largest city in Illinois by population...
, remaining there until 2006, when it moved to the campus
Illinois Institute of Technology Academic Campus
Illinois Institute of Technology Academic Campus or IIT Main Campus is one of five campuses of the Illinois Institute of Technology. It is located in the Douglas community area and has an official address of 3300 South Federal Street and is roughly bounded by 31st Street, State Street, 35th Street...
of the Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, industrial technology, information technology, design, and law...
(IIT) in the Bronzeville neighborhood in the Douglas community area
Community areas of Chicago
Community areas in Chicago refers to the work of the Social Science Research Committee at University of Chicago which has unofficially divided the City of Chicago into 77 community areas. These areas are well-defined and static...
of Chicago.
Classes are exclusively small seminars in which students discuss original source material rather than read textbooks. The core curriculum, a sequence of courses in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and integrated studies
Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....
, makes up two thirds of the course work required for a degree. Shimer has offered a study abroad
Study abroad
Studying abroad is the act of a student pursuing educational opportunities in a country other than one's own. This can include primary, secondary and post-secondary students...
program in Oxford, England, since 1963 and a weekend program for working adults since 1981. Applicants to the school are evaluated on their academic potential, based primarily on an essay. No minimum grades or test scores are required. The Early Entrant Program
Early entrance at Shimer College
The early entrance program at Shimer College, known at different times as the Early Entrant Program and Early Entrance Program, is a program that allows high school students to go to college early. Early entrants at Shimer are admitted as regular college students after completing at least two...
, in place since 1950, allows students who have not yet completed high school to start college early. Shimer has the third highest rate of graduates who complete doctorate degrees of any liberal arts college in the country. Fifty percent of students go on to graduate study; twenty percent complete doctoral degrees.
Shimer resides on the IIT main campus, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 2005. There, students maintain Shimer College traditions but also participate in IIT student life. Shimer practices democratic self-governance to an extent that it states "is rare among institutions of higher education". Since 1977, the college has been governed internally by faculty, staff, and students working through a structure of committees and an egalitarian deliberative body called the Assembly. Shimer enrolled 119 full-time students in 2011. Notable alumni include poets, authors, political theorists, experimental artists, and computing pioneers.
History
Shimer was founded in 1852, when the pioneer town of Mt. Carroll, Illinois, lacking a public school, incorporated the Mt. Carroll Seminary with no land, no teachers, and no money. The town persuaded two schoolteachers from Ballston Spa, New YorkBallston Spa, New York
Ballston Spa is a village in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 5,556 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Saratoga County. The village is named after Rev. Eliphalet Ball, a Congregationalist clergyman and an early settler. The village lies on the border of two...
, Frances Wood
Frances Shimer
Frances Shimer , born Frances Ann Wood, was an American educator. She was the founder of the Mount Carroll Seminary, which later became Shimer College, in Mount Carroll, Illinois...
and her friend Cindarella Gregory, to come west to the prairie to teach, and on May 11, 1853, the new seminary opened with 11 students in a local church. Failing to raise enough money locally, the incorporators borrowed enough money to construct a building in 1854; discouraged by the financial picture, however, they sold the school to Wood and Gregory, who borrowed the money to buy it. In 1857, Wood married Henry Shimer
Henry Shimer
Henry Shimer was a naturalist and physician in Mount Carroll, Illinois. He was also a teacher at the Mount Carroll Seminary, which later became Shimer College, and was the husband of the seminary's founder, Frances Shimer....
, a mason to whom the seminary owed money, who gave Wood, and later the school, his name.
In 1864, the school began accepting only female students, not on principle, but because the school was out of space. Wishing to ensure the long-term survival of the school, in 1896 Frances Shimer reached an agreement with the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
(U. of C.), under which the school became the Frances Shimer Academy of the University of Chicago, affiliated loosely with the Baptist Church. Then Frances Shimer retired to Florida, never setting foot on campus again; she died in 1901. William Rainey Harper
William Rainey Harper
William Rainey Harper was one of America's leading academics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Harper helped to organize the University of Chicago and Bradley University and served as the first President of both institutions.-Early life:Harper was born on July 26, 1856 in New Concord,...
, then president of the U. of C., was the first to champion the idea of the Junior College in the United States, and in 1907, Shimer became one of the first schools to offer a junior college program. The two-year junior college program, which operated alongside the original preparatory program, was accredited in 1920.
The college suffered a severe decline in enrollment and subsequent financial hardship during and after the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, which it survived — under five different presidents — in part by reorganizing the six-year preparatory program into a four-year junior college program and in part through deep salary reductions. In 1943, Shimer president Albin Bro invited the Department of Education at the U. of C. to evaluate the entire college community. The 77 recommendations they returned would become the basis for Shimer's transformation from a conservative finishing school to a nontraditional, co-educational four-year college.
The school was renamed Shimer College in 1950, and adopted the Great Books
Great Books
Great Books refers primarily to a group of books that tradition, and various institutions and authorities, have regarded as constituting or best expressing the foundations of Western culture ; derivatively the term also refers to a curriculum or method of education based around a list of such books...
curriculum then in place at the U. of C. The U. of C. connection was dissolved in 1958, following the U. of C.'s decision to abandon the Great Books plan and a narrowly averted Shimer bankruptcy in 1957. The Great Books program at Shimer lived on, and the school achieved national recognition and rapid growth in enrollment through the 1960s. In 1963, a Harvard Educational Review
Harvard Educational Review
The Harvard Educational Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal of opinion and research dealing with education, associated with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and published by the Harvard Education Publishing Group. The journal was established in 1930.Since 1945, editorial decisions...
article named Shimer as one of 11 colleges with an "ideal intellectual climate". A 1966 article in the education journal Phi Delta Kappa
Phi Delta Kappa
Phi Delta Kappa is an US professional organization for educators. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. It was founded on 24 January 1906. Phi Delta Kappa also had a youth organization, called Xinos, girls, and Kudos, guys.-Membership:Currently, membership consists of students,...
n reported that Shimer "present[ed] impressive statistical evidence that their students are better prepared for graduate work in the arts and sciences and in the professions than those who have specialized in particular areas."
In the late 1960s, Shimer experienced a period of internal unrest known as the "Grotesque Internecine Struggle," involving disputes over curriculum changes, the extent to which student behavior should be regulated, and allegedly inadequate fundraising by president Joe Mullin
Francis Joseph Mullin
Francis Joseph Mullin , also often known as F.J. Mullin or Joe Mullin, was the seventh president of Shimer College....
; half of the faculty and a large portion of the student body departed as a result. As financial problems worsened, the school's survival was in doubt. The trustees voted to close the college at the end of 1973, but the school was saved by a desperate fund-raising campaign led by students and faculty. Three times in the next four years, the trustees voted to shut the school down, only to later vote to reopen it. Finally filing for bankruptcy in 1977, the trustees, in the words of board chair Barry Carroll, "put responsibility for the school's continuing on the shoulders of a very dedicated faculty of 12 and students who volunteered", under the leadership of Don Moon
Don Moon (educator)
Don P. Moon is an American educator, minister, and former nuclear reactor physicist. He was the president of Shimer College from 1978 to 2004, and has been on the faculty of Shimer College from 1967 to the present....
, a nuclear engineer and Episcopal priest who had joined the faculty in 1967. Accepting an invitation from the city of Waukegan, Illinois
Waukegan, Illinois
Waukegan is a city and county seat of Lake County, Illinois. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 87,901. The 2010 population was 89,078. It is the ninth-largest city in Illinois by population...
, a declining industrial suburb north of Chicago, the faculty and 62 students borrowed trucks and moved the college into two "run down" homes over Christmas break in 1978. Classes began on schedule in January 1979. The college emerged from bankruptcy in 1980, but lost its accreditation as a result of its financial problems. Over the next 25 years, Shimer purchased 12 of the surrounding homes to form a makeshift campus and slowly progressed towards financial stability. By 1988, enrollment had climbed from a low of 40 to 114 and income exceeded expenses. Shimer won a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
(NEH) in 1991, with the help of then NEH chair and core-curriculum advocate Lynne Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Lynne Ann Cheney is the wife of former United States Vice President Dick Cheney and served as the Second Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009...
; the grant helped the school raise US$2 million and revitalized fund raising. That same year, Shimer's accreditation was restored by the Higher Learning Commission
The Higher Learning Commission
The Higher Learning Commission is part of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The Higher Learning Commission oversees the accreditation of degree-granting colleges and universities in nineteen Midwestern and South-Central states, including Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa,...
of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools
North Central Association of Colleges and Schools
The North Central Association of Colleges and Schools , also known as the North Central Association, is a membership organization, consisting of colleges, universities, and schools in 19 U.S. states, that is engaged in educational accreditation...
.
In 2006, Shimer, again struggling with stagnating enrollment, accepted an invitation to move, this time to the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, industrial technology, information technology, design, and law...
(IIT) in Chicago, under a long-term lease agreement; the two institutions kept separate faculties and boards. Shimer attracted national attention in 2009 when the school became embroiled in "a battle over what some saw as a right-wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
attempt to take over its board and administration". Students, organized under the name Shimer Student Alliance, protested at the February 2010 Board meeting. Following votes of no confidence by the faculty, the alumni, and the Assembly (Shimer's democratic governing body), president Thomas Lindsay stepped down in April 2010. He was succeeded by Ed Noonan, a Chicago-area architect and longtime Trustee of the college.
Academics
Great Books program
Shimer is one of four Great Books colleges in the US. The Great Books movement began with the work of John ErskineJohn Erskine (educator)
John Erskine was a U.S. educator and author, born in New York City and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey. He graduated from Columbia University ....
, who founded a Socratic
Socratic method
The Socratic method , named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas...
seminar using great books at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1919. This seminar profoundly impacted Erskine's colleague Mortimer Adler
Mortimer Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American philosopher, educator, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for the longest stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California...
, who came to believe that the purpose of education was to engage student's minds "in the study of individual works of merit ... accompanied by a discussion of the ideas, the values, and the forms embodied in such products of human art." Robert Maynard Hutchins, who led the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1951, brought Adler to the U. of C. and wholeheartedly embraced his ideas. In 1931, Hutchins implemented the "Chicago Plan", which later became known as the "Hutchins Plan".
The Chicago program comprised sequences in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences which were supposed to integrate past and present work within these divisions of knowledge. In addition, these sequences were capped by work in philosophy and history. The emphasis in teaching was on small classes with bright students, where discussion could supplant monologue as the dominant pedagogic technique.... At the same time, in order to retain high academic standards and contact with the "frontiers of knowledge", the College's pedagogy emphasized reading originals (sometimes although not invariably, defined as Great Books).
Shimer, which had been affiliated with the U. of C. since 1896, adopted the Hutchins plan entirely in 1950, including the Chicago syllabi, comprehensive examinations, and several of their instructors. The U. of C. abandoned the program after Hutchins left in 1951, but Shimer maintained it, and has done so through the decades that followed.
The 200-book reading list remains largely faithful to the original Hutchins plan, but new works are judiciously added to the core curriculum; these have included voices originally overlooked in the formation of the canon. It now includes, for example, works by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
, Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics. She is currently a Professor at New York University and a Visiting Professor...
, Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
, and Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, along with other contemporary authors. Readings are organized by broad historical and philosophical themes, rather than conventional fields. Small seminars are the sole form of instruction; even the natural sciences are taught via discussion. The classes, which are composed of on average eight and no more than twelve students, read and discuss only original source material. Faculty are referred to as "facilitators" and are always addressed by first name. Teachers facilitate discussion but may talk little in the learning process, which Shimer calls "shared inquiry", in which "the text is the teacher, and thus the faculty member's role is to facilitate interaction between the text and the students."
Curriculum
Shimer awards bachelor's degreeBachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
s with concentrations in humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Two-thirds of the courses required for graduation are mandatory core courses. The remainder are electives, three-quarters of which must be in the student's chosen area of concentration. Electives offer in-depth work in a particular field, or basic skills instruction in languages and mathematics, and are often offered as "tutorials" with only one or two students per course. Students may cross-register for courses at IIT and the Vandercook College of Music
Vandercook College of Music
VanderCook College of Music is a private, liberal arts college in Chicago, Illinois, and is the only college in the country solely specializing in the training of music educators. Students may pursue a Bachelor of Music in Education , Master of Music in Education , and Master of Music in Education...
, also located on the IIT campus; courses available in this fashion include laboratory science, advanced mathematics, and music history and theory.
Core
The core curriculum of Shimer College is a sequence of 16 required courses in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and interdisciplinaryInterdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....
studies. The Basic Studies courses, numbered one and two, are generally taken during the first two years, and the Advanced Studies courses, numbered three and four, during the final two years. The Advanced Integrative Studies courses, numbered five and six, are taken in the senior year.
| Humanities | Social sciences | Natural sciences | Integrative studies | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One | Art and Music | Society, Culture, and Personality | Laws and Models in Chemistry | Analysis, Logic, and Rhetoric |
| Two | Poetry, Drama, and Fiction | The Western Political Tradition | Evolution, Genetics, and Animal Behavior | The Nature and Creation of Mathematics |
| Basic Studies Comprehensive Examination | ||||
| Three | Philosophy and Theology | Modern Theories of State and Society | Light, Motion, and Scientific Explanation | |
| Four | Critical Evaluation in the Humanities (Enlightenment to the Present) | Methodology in the Social Sciences | Quantum Physics and Molecular Biology | |
| Area Studies Comprehensive Examination | ||||
| Five | History and Philosophy of Western Civilization: From the Ancient World Through the Middle Ages | |||
| Six | History and Philosophy of Western Civilization: From the Middles Ages Through the Nineteenth Century | |||
| Senior Thesis | ||||
The humanities core begins with the study of visual art and music and progresses through literature, philosophy and theology. It culminates with the final course, "Critical Evaluation in the Humanities," which seeks to unify the Humanities courses by approaching all of the areas of the Humanities theoretically through critical evaluation of significant works of the 18th century and later. The course includes Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
's I and Thou
I and Thou
Ich und Du, usually translated as I and Thou, is a book by Martin Buber, published in 1923, and first translated to English in 1937.-Premise:Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:...
, Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
's Critique of Judgment, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
's Beyond Good and Evil
Beyond Good and Evil
Beyond Good and Evil is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886.It takes up and expands on the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but approached from a more critical, polemical direction....
, and Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
's Fear and Trembling
Fear and Trembling
Fear and Trembling is an influential philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard, published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio...
.
The social sciences sequence begins with study of the individual and society in the first course, proceeds to classical political thought in the second, then modern social and political theory in the third, and concludes with the "Theories of Social Inquiry" course, which focuses on statistical and interpretive methods in sociology, linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
theory, and 20th century social thought, through works like Clifford Geertz
Clifford Geertz
Clifford James Geertz was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology, and who was considered "for three decades...the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States." He served until...
's The Interpretation of Cultures, Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the most widely known of educator Paulo Freire's works. It proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and society...
, Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
's Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
, and Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim , or Károly Mannheim in the original writing of his name, was a Jewish Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology and a founder of the sociology of knowledge.-Life:Mannheim studied in Budapest,...
's Ideology and Utopia.
The natural sciences core studies science as it has developed historically, beginning with the presocratic philosophers of the 6th century BC and the theory of atoms in the first course; evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
, genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
, and animal behavior in the second; optics
Optics
Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light...
and the theory of relativity
Principle of relativity
In physics, the principle of relativity is the requirement that the equations describing the laws of physics have the same form in all admissible frames of reference....
in the third; and concluding with the study of quantum physics and molecular biology
Molecular biology
Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...
. The natural science reading list includes Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
’s Relativity, Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
’s Opticks
Opticks
Opticks is a book written by English physicist Isaac Newton that was released to the public in 1704. It is about optics and the refraction of light, and is considered one of the great works of science in history...
, Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
’s QED
QED (book)
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter is an adaptation for the general reader of four lectures on quantum electrodynamics by Richard Feynman ....
, Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier , the "father of modern chemistry", was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry and biology...
’s Elements of Chemistry
Traité Élémentaire de Chimie
Traité élémentaire de chimie is an influential textbook written by Antoine Lavoisier published in 1789 and translated into English by Robert Kerr in 1790.The book is considered to be the first modern chemical textbook...
, and Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
’s Origin of Species.
The first basic integrative studies course teaches the fundamental skills in close reading and argumentation required to work with original source texts. In the second course, logic and mathematics are studied in terms of the development of geometry and axiomatic system
Axiomatic system
In mathematics, an axiomatic system is any set of axioms from which some or all axioms can be used in conjunction to logically derive theorems. A mathematical theory consists of an axiomatic system and all its derived theorems...
s in ancient and modern times. The advanced integrative studies courses, in which students explore connections between the course texts and those they have studied in other courses, are the capstone of the Shimer curriculum. The readings are arranged chronologically in a unified, full-year sequence to demonstrate their historical relationships, beginning with the ancient epic poems The Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
and concluding with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
's Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
's Reason in History.
Writing projects, comprehensive examinations, and thesis
Students are required to complete a Semester Project during the final week of each term (known as Writing Week), on a topic they choose in conjunction with their advisor. The project does not receive a grade, but is reviewed by the student's instructors in a Final Conference and must be accepted before the student can register for the following semester. Students are also required to complete a separate substantial research paper before registering for the Advanced Integrative Studies courses.Students must pass at least two comprehensive examinations to graduate. Each comprehensive examination involves several days of reading and writing, and may include an oral component as well. After completing the Basic Studies courses, all students must pass the Basic Studies Comprehensive Examination to continue on to higher level courses. After completing the Advanced Studies courses, students must pass at least one Area Studies Comprehensive Examination, usually in their area of concentration.
The academic experience culminates with the Senior Thesis. Completed during the course of the student's fourth year, it usually takes the form of an analytical or expository essay, but may be a piece of original fiction, poetry, a performance, or a work of visual art. Students are encouraged to defend their theses orally and the public is invited to these defenses.
Special programs
The Weekend College Program, founded in 1981, allows working adults to participate in an intensive schedule of classes which meet every third weekend, to allow them to graduate in four years. Weekend students have ranged from 23 to 70 years of age and come from all over the country; weekend students have commuted from as far as Florida and New York. The program enrolled 35 to 40 students in 2010.Shimer first offered a year of study abroad, in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, in 1961 and has held the program biennially in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, England, since 1963. The Shimer-in-Oxford program allows eight to fifteen students to spend either one or two semesters in Oxford with a Shimer professor. The students, who are in their third and fourth years, take one course from the core curriculum each term and the remainder of their work as individual or very small group tutorials with academics from in and around the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
in subjects the students select themselves. The Shimer-in-Oxford program is now affiliated with the Oxford Study Abroad Programme, founded in 1985, which allows students to share housing with students from Oxford University and other American colleges.
The Teaching Fellows Program offers a graduate
Graduate school
A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...
-level Great Books course designed for kindergarten
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...
through 12th grade school teachers. Shimer does not award graduate degrees, but teachers earn professional development
Professional development
Professional development refers to skills and knowledge attained for both personal development and career advancement. Professional development encompasses all types of facilitated learning opportunities, ranging from college degrees to formal coursework, conferences and informal learning...
credit through the program. The program complements traditional education courses by providing the background knowledge required for teachers to give more content-rich instruction. The program was developed in conjunction with the Core Knowledge Foundation
Core Knowledge Foundation
The Core Knowledge Foundation is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation founded in 1986 by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. The Foundation is dedicated to excellence and fairness in early education.-Ideals of Core Knowledge:...
, which was founded in 1986 by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., author of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, to promote a common core of learning in elementary school
Elementary school
An elementary school or primary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as elementary or primary education. Elementary school is the preferred term in some countries, particularly those in North America, where the terms grade school and grammar...
education.
The Great Books + Law program, launched in 2007, is offered in conjunction with the Chicago-Kent College of Law
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Chicago–Kent College of Law, the law school affiliated with Illinois Institute of Technology, is nationally recognized for the scholarship and accomplishments of its faculty and student body. It is the second oldest law school in the state of Illinois. Many of the applications of technology in the...
(the Law School of the Illinois Institute of Technology). It allows students to count their first year of law school towards their Shimer degree and receive their J.D.
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...
in a total of five years instead of seven. A joint program has also been operated since 2009 with Harold Washington College
Harold Washington College
Harold Washington College is a community college within the City Colleges of Chicago system of Chicago, Illinois. It is located in the Loop at 30 E Lake St...
(HWC), one of the very few community colleges
Community colleges in the United States
In the United States, community colleges are primarily two-year public institutions of higher education and were once commonly called junior colleges....
to offer a Great Books program. The program allows HWC students to take one Shimer course, and is meant to encourage students to transfer to Shimer to complete their bachelor's degree.
Faculty
As of 2009, Shimer had 11 full-time and 2 part-time faculty; 12 of the 13 hold doctorate degrees. Four of those faculty members were among those who brought the school to Waukegan in 1978; the average tenure is 21 years. The student-faculty ratio is eight to one. Shimer instructors teach across disciplines and the "ideal is that any faculty member can teach any one of the core courses".Admission
Shimer applicants are evaluated on their academic potential: no minimum grade point average (GPA) or test score is required. The college accepts students who it believes will benefit from and contribute to its intellectual community. Applicants are asked to write an essay analyzing their academic experience, while displaying their creative talents. This, along with a personal interview, is the major criterion for admission. For weekend students, who have typically been out of school for some years, work and prior college experience are also taken into account. Nearly 90 percent of applicants are admitted, but candidates are counseled closely to reduce frivolous applications. The average GPA of incoming students is 3.29 on a four point scale. Average composite scores on the ACT and SATSAT
The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...
, standardized college admissions tests widely used in the U.S., are 28 (at the 92nd percentile
Percentile
In statistics, a percentile is the value of a variable below which a certain percent of observations fall. For example, the 20th percentile is the value below which 20 percent of the observations may be found...
) and 1917 (at the 90th percentile), respectively.
Shimer's Early Entrant program
Early entrance at Shimer College
The early entrance program at Shimer College, known at different times as the Early Entrant Program and Early Entrance Program, is a program that allows high school students to go to college early. Early entrants at Shimer are admitted as regular college students after completing at least two...
, which admits students who have not yet graduated from high school, was first launched in 1950. The program has been supported since then by the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
, the Carnegie Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding," is one of the oldest, largest and most influential of American foundations...
and others. Students enter after the 10th or 11th grade (around age 16 or 17), and follow the same curriculum as all other students. The college will consider the application of any interested student, stressing motivation, willingness to learn, and intellectual curiosity as the most important qualifications. Shimer also actively encourages applications from home-schooled
Homeschooling
Homeschooling or homeschool is the education of children at home, typically by parents but sometimes by tutors, rather than in other formal settings of public or private school...
students, and makes special accommodations for their credentials (for example, their lack of transcripts
Transcript (education)
In education, a transcript is an inventory of the courses taken and grades earned of a student throughout a course.- United States :In United States education, a transcript is a copy of a student's permanent academic record which usually means all courses taken, all grades received, all...
). In 2008, 16 percent of new students were early entrants or home-schooled students of a similar age.
In 2009–2010, full-time tuition and fees were $21,000 and on-campus room and board was $12,000. Ninety-one percent of undergraduates received financial aid; the average aid package was $10,594.
Recognition and accomplishments
In 2009, Shimer was ranked 82nd among liberal arts colleges by Washington Monthly (WM), while it was unranked by U.S. News & World ReportU.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report is an American news magazine published from Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek it was for many years a leading news weekly, focusing more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories...
(USNWR). In 2006, Shimer was selected as one of the top 50 colleges in All-American Colleges: Top Schools for Conservatives, Old-fashioned Liberals, and People of Faith, which highlights "programs that connect in a special way with the core values of the American founding and the vibrant intellectual traditions of the West". Barron's
Barron's Educational Series
Barron's Educational Series, Inc. is an American test preparation company, founded in 1941 as a publisher of materials to help students to prepare for college entrance examinations, and that offers online college entrance exam preparation classes...
named Shimer one of the 300 best buys in college education, noting that "the success of the Shimer curriculum depends a great deal on the knowledge and skill of the faculty facilitators, who receive accolades ranging from 'fantastic' to 'brilliant. In 2000, Insight Magazine named Shimer one of the most politically incorrect
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
schools in the nation, a list which recognized "colleges that had strong and effective traditional curricula that were not obsessed with the recent educational fads and fetishes such as multiculturalism
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
and diversity
Diversity (politics)
In the political arena, the term diversity is used to describe political entities with members who have identifiable differences in their backgrounds or lifestyles....
."
In 2007, Shimer joined a national effort by the Education Conservancy
Education Conservancy
The Education Conservancy is an American educational non-profit organization headed by director Lloyd Thacker. It describes its goal as being "committed to improving college admission processes for students, colleges and high schools."...
to boycott participation in college-ranking surveys altogether. Then-President William Craig Rice
William Craig Rice
William Craig Rice is an American educator. He is currently the Director of the Division of Education Programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities....
said "what Shimer does well—educating ourselves in on-going dialogue with the greatest minds of the past—can’t be captured in the U.S. News measurements." Nearly all Shimer students take the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), a standardized test
Standardized test
A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a...
for graduate school
Graduate school
A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...
admissions, their senior
Senior (education)
Senior is a term used in the United States to describe a student in the 4th year of study .-High school:...
year, outscoring three of four potential graduate students and "consistently rank among the best in the nation in scores on the verbal and analytical portions of the test", with average analytic scores in the 91st percentile. A 2009 report by The Washington Monthly ranked Shimer third in graduate Ph.D. rate among U.S. liberal arts colleges. In a 1998 study by the University of Wisconsin, Shimer was found to have the highest rate of graduates receiving doctorate degrees of any liberal arts college and the third highest of any undergraduate program in the nation. Studies based on data from the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS) found Shimer to have the seventh-highest alumni Ph.D. rate of all US colleges and universities and the highest rate for Ph.D.s in linguistics.
Campus
Shimer relocated to the main campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2006, after 25 years at its former Waukegan, Illinois location, which comprised a loose collection of vintage houses, an old YWCAYWCA
The YWCA USA is the United States branch of a women's membership movement that strives to create opportunities for women's growth, leadership and power in order to attain a common vision—to eliminate racism and empower women. The YWCA is a non-profit organization, the first of which was founded in...
, and an apartment building. Then-president Rice believed that the new location would attract a wider pool of students and financial contributors, and would offer expanded student services (such as dining and athletic facilities) and opportunities to cooperate academically with IIT.
The 120 acres (48.6 ha) campus is centered around 33rd and State Streets, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the Chicago Loop
Chicago Loop
The Loop or Chicago Loop is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community areas located in the City of Chicago, Illinois. It is the historic commercial center of downtown Chicago...
, in the historic Bronzeville
Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District
Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District or simply Bronzeville is a historic district in the Douglas community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It includes nine structures that were accorded the Chicago Landmark designation on September 9, 1998...
neighborhood on the South Side
South Side (Chicago)
The South Side is a major part of the City of Chicago, which is located in Cook County, Illinois, United States. Much of it has evolved from the city's incorporation of independent townships, such as Hyde Park Township which voted along with several other townships to be annexed in the June 29,...
of Chicago. Also known as the Black Metropolis District, the area is a landmark in African-American history for the many notable African-American people and institutions that thrived there in the mid-20th century. The extant structures from that period were added jointly to the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1986, and were designated a Chicago Landmark
Chicago Landmark
Chicago Landmark is a designation of the Mayor of Chicago and the Chicago City Council for historic buildings and other sites in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Listed sites are selected after meeting a combination of criteria, including historical, economic, architectural, artistic, cultural,...
in 1998.
The campus on which Shimer resides was designed by modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
, described by the New York Times as "one of the great figures of 20th-century architecture". Van der Rohe's master plan for the IIT campus was one of the most ambitious projects he ever conceived and the campus, with 20 of his works, is the greatest concentration of his buildings in the world. The campus was landscaped by van der Rohe's close colleague Alfred Caldwell
Alfred Caldwell
Alfred Caldwell was an American architect best known for his landscape architecture in and around Chicago, Illinois.- Career :* Attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, left before completing a degree....
, one the last representatives of the Prairie School
Prairie School
Prairie School was a late 19th and early 20th century architectural style, most common to the Midwestern United States.The works of the Prairie School architects are usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands,...
of landscape architects. In 1976, the American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
named the IIT campus one of the 200 most significant works of architecture in the United States. The IIT Main Campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Gas Technology Institute
The Gas Technology Institute is an American non-profit research and development organization which develops, demonstrates, and licenses new energy technologies for private and public clients, with a particular focus on the natural gas industry. GTI is located in Des Plaines, Illinois.-History:The...
complex, under a long-term lease agreement with IIT. The complex, designed by van der Rohe, consists of four buildings built between 1947 and 1955. The South building was home to the first industrial nuclear reactor in the U.S.
Shimer students who choose to live on-campus reside in Gunsaulus Hall, which was converted into a fully furnished apartment-style residence in 2008. Shimer has access to the resources of the Paul V. Galvin Library, IIT's main research library, which contains 1.8 million volumes, more than 25,500 journal titles, and a wide range of digital resources. Shimer's own collection of 15,000 books is also housed in the Galvin library, where it was moved when the school relocated from Waukegan.
Other facilities available to Shimer students include the McCormick Tribune Campus Center
McCormick Tribune Campus Center
The McCormick Tribune Campus Center is a building on the main campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.-Description:...
(MTCC), which was designed by internationally acclaimed architect Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
in 2003.
The facility is the main student activity center, with food courts, a newsstand, lounge areas, conference centers, computer workstations, a bookstore, and an auditorium. Students may also take advantage of the Keating Sports Center, the main athletic complex and home to IIT's varsity team
Varsity team
In the United States and Canada, varsity sports teams are the principal athletic teams representing a college, university, high school or other secondary school. Such teams compete against the principal athletic teams at other colleges/universities, or in the case of secondary schools, against...
s. The center offers racquetball courts, bowling, rock climbing, and a wide range of dance and exercise classes along with basketball, volleyball, soccer and other team sports.
Governance
Shimer College is a not-for-profit corporation with a self-perpetuating Board of TrusteesBoard of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
responsible for the affairs and the assets of the college. The board delegates authority to the president of the college, who acts as the chief executive administrator, and to the dean of the college and the faculty regarding academic affairs. As of December 2009, the board had 36 members (including three students and two faculty), with a target membership of 40, and was chaired by Christopher B. Nelson, president of St. John's College
St. John's College, U.S.
St. John's College is a liberal arts college with two U.S. campuses: one in Annapolis, Maryland and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1696 as a preparatory school, King William's School, the school received a collegiate charter in 1784, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher...
.
"As a function of its mission to promote active citizenship", Shimer states that it is "devoted to internal self-governance to an extent that is rare among institutions of higher education." Since 1977, Shimer has been governed internally by a deliberative body called the Assembly. Students and faculty are elected by the community at large to serve on all administrative bodies, including the Board of Trustees, such that "all the top-down bureaucracy of traditional colleges and universities has been replaced by participatory democracy committed to dialogue." The Assembly has no legal authority, but governs, Shimer states, "by virtue of the moral suasion established by communal deliberation". Begun informally in the years immediately prior to the move to Waukegan, the Assembly was formalized by a constitution in 1980. Voting members include all students, faculty, administrators, staff and trustees. Alumni are also members but do not vote. The Assembly advises the administration and conducts the business of the college through a system of committees with purview over administration, academic planning, budgeting, admissions, grievances, financial aid, and quality of life. Committees are composed of faculty, staff, and students elected by the Assembly as a whole.
Shimer students are also represented on, and free to participate in, the IIT Student Government
Students' union
A students' union, student government, student senate, students' association, guild of students or government of student body is a student organization present in many colleges and universities, and has started appearing in some high schools...
Association (SGA), which acts as a liaison to the university administration and a forum for express student opinion.
Student life
The New York Times has called Shimer "one of the smallest liberal arts colleges in the United States", and described Shimer students as "... both valedictorians and high school dropouts. What the students share, besides a love of books, is a disdain for the conventional style of education. Many say they did not have a good high school experience." Students tend to be individualistic, creative thinkers, and are encouraged to be questioning and inquisitive. Shimer enrolled 100 students in 2009, from 22 states and 2 other countries; the majority came from Illinois. Over 80 percent of the students were white and 40 percent were over age 25. Of full-time students who attend their first year, 70 percent return for their second. Fifty-five percent of first-time, full-time students will graduate within six years.Fraternities
Fraternities and sororities
Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
, sororities
Fraternities and sororities
Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
and other organizations that promote exclusivity are not allowed and Shimer has no organized clubs or athletic programs of its own. The college has a tradition of community meals, which all are invited to attend, that dates back to the early days on the Waukegan campus, when the whole community would meet for potluck
Potluck
A potluck is a gathering of people where each person or group of people contributes a dish of food prepared by the person or the group of people, to be shared among the group...
meals and discuss matters of general interest in gatherings that eventually gave birth to the Assembly. The Orange Horse, Shimer's bi-annual talent show, is a tradition dating back to the 1960s and invites students, faculty, and alumni to read poetry, sing, play music, or tell jokes, individually or in groups.
The Shimer theater program has been under the direction of Humanities Professor Eileen Buchanan since 1967. Buchanan, also a professional actor and director, directs productions that complement the curriculum and offer anyone who wants to participate in theater the chance to do so. Productions in the Chicago location have included Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
's Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski....
and Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler is an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.- Personal life :...
's Vagina Monologues.
In addition to the resources of the MTCC and the athletic facilities, Shimer students are able to take part in the more than 150 student organizations sponsored by IIT, including Liit Magazine, the student-run literary magazine of IIT, and IIT's on-campus radio station, WIIT
WIIT
WIIT is a radio station located at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Licensed to Chicago, Illinois, USA, it serves the Chicago area. The station is currently owned by Illinois Institute of Technology....
, where they can host their own shows.
Shimer students do not necessarily graduate with specific career skills. Most students go on to graduate studies: 50 percent of Shimer graduates earn master's degrees and 21 percent go on to earn doctorates. Another 10 percent attend law school and 5 percent go to business school.
Alumni
As of 2008, Shimer claimed 5,615 living alumni. Nearly 25 percent of graduates are employed in education (from elementary schools through college), 7 percent are lawyers, and 7 percent work in computer software. The remainder occupy all walks of life, from consulting to social services, to non-profit organizations.Samuel W. McCall
Samuel W. McCall
Samuel Walker McCall was a member of the United States House of Representatives, and the 47th Governor of Massachusetts...
, a US Representative
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
from Massachusetts's 8th congressional district
Massachusetts's 8th congressional district
Massachusetts's 8th congressional district is in eastern Massachusetts, including part of Boston and the immediately adjacent cities of Cambridge, Somerville, and Chelsea. With an area of just , it is the smallest by area of Massachusetts's ten congressional districts. It is currently represented...
and later Governor of Massachusetts
Governor of Massachusetts
The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the executive magistrate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. The current governor is Democrat Deval Patrick.-Constitutional role:...
, attended the Mt. Carroll Seminary in the 1860s. Shimer graduates include poets and authors such as Peter Cooley
Peter Cooley
Peter Cooley is an American poet and Professor of English in the Department of English at Tulane University. He also directs Tulane’s Creative Writing Program...
, who has sponsored a Shimer College poetry contest for many years, as part of the University and College Poetry Prize Program of the Academy of American Poets
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...
; poet Stephen Dobyns
Stephen Dobyns
Stephen J. Dobyns is an American poet and novelist born in Orange, New Jersey, and residing in Westerly, RI.-Life:Was born on February 19, 1941 in Orange, New Jersey to Lester L., a minister, and Barbara Johnston...
; Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-nominated writer John Norman Maclean
John Norman Maclean
John N. Maclean is an author and journalist best known for his 1999 book, Fire on the Mountain, about the deadly South Canyon Fire on Storm King Mountain , in 1994. Maclean, a former Washington correspondent for The Chicago Tribune, has written three books about wildfire. The books are non-fiction,...
, author of the bestselling Fire on the Mountain
Fire on the Mountain (1999 book)
Fire on the Mountain is a 1999 non-fiction book by John Norman Maclean that describes the most famous wildland fire of the late 20th century. The book describes the events and aftermath of the South Canyon Fire on Storm King Mountain on July 6, 1994 in Colorado, which took the lives of 14...
; and award-winning comic book writer and editor Catherine "Cat" Yronwode. Alumni also include notable political theorists such as Arab-Israeli conflict scholar Alan Dowty
Alan Dowty
Alan Dowty is Professor of Political Science Emeritus, University of Notre Dame. He was formerly Kahanoff Chair Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Calgary, 2003-2006, and President of the Association for Israel Studies, 2005-2007....
and Robert Keohane
Robert Keohane
Robert O. Keohane is an American academic, who, following the publication of his influential book After Hegemony , became widely associated with the theory of neoliberal institutionalism in international relations...
, author of the seminal work After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, and political activists such as C. Clark Kissinger
C. Clark Kissinger
C. Clark Kissinger was the National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society in 1964-65. He visited the People's Republic of China twice during the Cultural Revolution, and is a devoted Maoist. His writings frequently appear in Revolution, journal of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA...
, former National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
(SDS) and situationist Ken Knabb
Ken Knabb
Ken Knabb is an American writer, translator, and theorist, best known for his translations of Guy Debord and the Situationist International.-Early life:...
. Computer pioneers Nick Pippenger
Nick Pippenger
Nicholas John Pippenger is a researcher in computer science. He has produced a number of fundamental results many of which are being widely used in the field of theoretical computer science, database processing and compiler optimization. He has also achieved the rank of IBM Fellow at Almaden IBM...
and Daniel J. Sandin
Daniel J. Sandin
Daniel J. Sandin is a video and computer graphics artist/researcher. He is a Professor Emeritus of the School of Art & Design, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Co-director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago...
went to Shimer, as did experimental artists Laurie Spiegel
Laurie Spiegel
Laurie Spiegel is an American composer. She has worked at Bell Laboratories, in computer graphics, and is known primarily for her electronic-music compositions and her algorithmic composition software Music Mouse...
and Ken Friedman
Ken Friedman
Ken Friedman, is a seminal figure in Fluxus, an international laboratory for experimental art, architecture, design, literature, and music. He had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1966. He has also been involved with mail art, and he has written extensively about Fluxus and Intermedia...
.
Other notable alumni include singer/songwriter Phoebe Snow
Phoebe Snow
Phoebe Snow was a fictional character created by Earnest Elmo Calkins to promote the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. The advertising campaign, based on a live model, using impressionistic techniques and a fictional character, was one of the first of its kind.-The advertising...
; medical inventor, Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
columnist, and Yale University School of Medicine professor Sydney Spiesel
Sydney Spiesel
Dr. Sydney Z. Spiesel is a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine on the clinical faculty of the Yale University School of Medicine.Spiesel is the inventor of a shampoo that makes lice eggs fluoresce under ultraviolet light, so making them more visible.Spiesel is a regular commentator...
; Whitman College
Whitman College
Whitman College is a private, co-educational, non-sectarian, residential undergraduate liberal arts college located in Walla Walla, Washington. Initially founded as a seminary by a territorial legislative charter in 1859, the school became a four year degree granting institution in 1883...
Classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
professor Elizabeth Vandiver
Elizabeth Vandiver
Elizabeth Vandiver is a noted professor of classics. She is currently Associate Professor of classics at Whitman College, having previously taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received the prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award from the American Philological Association in 1998...
; author, activist, and internet publisher Heather Corinna
Heather Corinna
Heather Corinna is an author, activist, and Internet publisher with a focus on progressive, affirming sexuality. She is a self-described "queer polymath: feminist activist, writer, photographer, artist, educator, Internet publisher, and community organizer."' She was one of the pioneers of...
; computer software author Steve Heller; philosopher and chess Grandmaster Jesse Kraai
Jesse Kraai
Jesse Kraai is a chess Grandmaster living in Richmond, CA. Kraai reached GM status in 2007. At that time, he was the first American-born player to achieve the title since Tal Shaked in 1997. In 2007, he won the chess state championship of New Mexico for the fifth consecutive year...
; and Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
State Representative Ron Schultz
Ron Schultz
Ron Schultz is a Homosassa, Florida Republican politician who serves as the District 43 Representative in the House of Representatives of the U.S. state of Florida. He was first elected to the Florida House on June 26, 2007 in a special election and was re-elected in 2008.Representative...
. Chicago businessman and Shimer graduate Peter Hanig co-organized the international public art exhibit CowParade
CowParade
CowParade is an international public art exhibit that has been featured in major world cities. Fiberglass sculptures of cows are decorated by local artists, and distributed over the city centre, in public places such as train stations, important avenues, and parks. They often feature artwork and...
in 1999.