AN OVERVIEW

The academic program at New College of Florida aims to encourage academic excellence, creativity, and personal initiative, and, in a context of collegiate residential life, to provide essential tools for life-long intellectual and moral growth.  To accomplish these ambitious objectives, New College has evolved a curriculum that differs from those at most colleges and contributes to New College's special intellectual intensity.

Academic contracts encourage students to establish, pursue, and measure progress toward their goals; small classes provide opportunities for detailed feedback from faculty; Independent Study Projects stimulate self-directed education; and the senior thesis, the culmination of the New College experience, allows a student to demonstrate mastery of a topic or medium while working with a faculty member who serves as a mentor.  Throughout the educational experience at New College, a student’s oral and written expression is refined in close contact with faculty.

The program at New College of Florida is flexible, and can accommodate a variety of interests and approaches to learning.  From the time a student arrives at New College, he or she is deeply and directly involved in shaping his or her academic program.  At orientation the student meets a faculty member who, serving as advisor and contract sponsor, discusses the student’s interests and goals and the opportunities to explore them.  Presentations during orientation yield additional information about opportunities and responsibilities, and how to make the most of them.  Miniclasses provide the opportunity to meet a wide range of faculty members over a two-day period of time, and preview the semester’s courses.  In each miniclass, professors present a short overview of the course.  After sampling the miniclasses, students are ready to draft their first academic contracts.

Each semester, study at New College is articulated in a contract undertaken in consultation with a faculty sponsor.  The New College academic contract is the agreement reached between student and sponsor as to what constitutes satisfactory academic progress in a semester.  The process of negotiating the contract encourages students to think about learning by articulating goals.  These documents and the interaction between faculty and students that they promote form the core of the New College academic program.  In addition to recording academic activities, the form includes spaces to consider experience at New College as a whole.  It makes explicit the responsibilities a student undertakes, and by doing so, forms the basis for self- and faculty evaluations of student work.  Once a student and his or her advisor have signed the completed form, the contract must be turned into the Office of the Registrar, and serves as a document of the registration process.  The decisions as to what activities to pursue for the semester are finalized in the contract.

Over the course of a student’s experience at New College, he or she may have several different sponsors, reflecting the varying interests and activities that the contracts embody.  The Office of the Provost assigns the student’s first contract sponsor.  At the beginning of a new semester a student may change advisors by having a different faculty member sign the contract.

In the first semester at New College, the contract is likely to contain from three to five classes--not all of them necessarily introductory--and possibly laboratory work in the sciences.  Later, as a student gains skills and gets to know faculty members, he or she may propose tutorials, special projects, and off-campus activities to supplement faculty course offerings.  The academic contract, and the consultation with faculty that it requires, challenges a student to design the kind of education that best serves his or her goals.

Throughout the first semester a student has the opportunity to consult with his or her sponsor concerning progress, tapping the faculty member’s wisdom as a scholar and teacher to help the student resolve problems and interpret new experiences.  When the student completes the courses and other activities specified in the contract, the professors write narrative evaluations of the student’s performance instead of providing the letter or number grades with which most students are familiar.

At the end of the semester, the sponsor certifies how well each of his or her advisees has fulfilled their contracts.  The contract certification and course evaluations help students discover areas of academic strength and interest, along with areas of difficulty they will need to address.  Evaluations and the contract certifications become foundations for subsequent contract planning.

After fall semester and winter break students enter January Interterm.  Toward the end of fall semester, students outline the projects they will pursue during Interterm.  One purpose of this project is to allow students to carry to completion an intensive study of their own design.  Alternatively, during the month-long Interterm students can join group projects or special courses that require full-time commitment (for example, participation in the production of a play or instruction in electron microscopy).  Faculty members remain in residence during the Interterm to assist students in carrying out their projects.  Students submit these projects to their faculty sponsors for evaluation at the end of the month.

The start of second semester finds the New College student again developing a contract, but now knowing more faculty personally and having been able to use time during the previous semester and Interterm for planning.  Students become important resources for each other.

In the second and third years the student focuses on a particular field or combination of fields that may become the Area of Concentration.  A student may concentrate in an academic discipline, following guidelines found under the appropriate discipline listing in this Catalog.  Or he or she may create, with faculty support, guidelines for a special concentration.  Either way, the selection of a concentration provides the basis for a senior project or thesis in the final year of study.

The student prepares for the thesis through appropriate courses and tutorials, and perhaps with study abroad or an internship.  The three Independent Study Projects provide experience in formulating a problem and carrying a project through to completion.  The next step is to designate three faculty members as the baccalaureate committee, one of the three being the thesis sponsor.  The student works closely with the thesis sponsor, and consults with the committee in completing the project that is the culmination of the New College experience.

Once completed, the senior thesis provides the basis for the baccalaureate examination, an oral exam that forms the basis of the committee’s evaluation of the thesis, the performance in the Area of Concentration, and the overall education at New College.

THE ACADEMIC CALENDAR

The academic year at New College consists of two fourteen-week semesters and a four-week January Interterm devoted to independent study.  Each semester is divided into two seven-week modules, with a one-week recess between them and a one-week exam/evaluation period at the end of the term.  Faculty offer both semester-long and seven-week-long courses, with professors choosing the format best suited to the subject matter.

 Holidays

The College does not schedule classes on official state holidays that fall during the fall or spring semesters or during ISP period.  These days include Martin Luther King Jr. Day (3rd Monday in January), Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and the day after Thanksgiving.

The College recognizes that in exceptional circumstances it may be appropriate for a faculty member to hold classes on an official holiday in order to fulfill the education purpose of the course.  However, examinations or other testing should not be given in a class scheduled on a holiday.

 

Baccalaureate Reading Days

Five days during the spring semester are reserved for the scheduling of baccalaureate exams:  the first three days of the twelfth week of classes, and the last two days of the fourteenth week of classes.  On these days classes will not be held.  These days are not to be considered holidays, but opportunities to attend baccalaureate exams, which are public events, and days to complete class projects and prepare for final exams.

GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS AT NEW COLLEGE

At New College there are no specific “core course” requirements.  Rather, students use their contracts, fashioned in collaboration with the contract advisor, to develop goals and educational activities that have personal value, while at the same time fulfilling the College’s expectations for breadth and depth, critical thinking, communication skills, and working with others as responsible and self-disciplined participants in the community.  Within each disciplinary concentration, the specific mix of courses, tutorials, fieldwork, study abroad, and other academic activities may vary from student to student.

To demonstrate breadth, students must complete at least eight courses designated as “Liberal Arts Curriculum” courses, including one from each of the three academic divisions.  In addition, a student must demonstrate basic computer proficiency and basic competence in mathematics. 

New College also values the acquisition of a depth of knowledge in an Area of Concentration (AOC) that supports the development of a senior thesis project by each student.  The Area of Concentration at New College may take one of several forms.  It may be divisional (Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences); disciplinary (e.g. art history, physics, sociology); joint-disciplinary (e.g. biology/psychology, music/anthropology), or a special program or topic of the student’s design (e.g. biochemistry, Latin American studies).  Each division's and discipline’s requirements for the AOC address content, critical thinking and communication skills.  The “Thesis Prospectus” describes plans for the senior thesis, and outlines the courses, tutorials, and other educational activities that the student and thesis sponsor have agreed will provide the requisite quantitative and communication skills as well as depth of knowledge in the chosen area.  The senior thesis project and oral Baccalaureate Exam serve as the evidence as to whether or not a student has acquired proficiency in writing and oral communication, as well as critical thinking, and whether the student may be capable of making an original contribution to his or her area of interest and expertise.