About the Seminar:

The Monson Seminar, a three-week, residential course in beautiful Monson, Maine, seeks to extend the high-impact educational experiences associated with liberal arts education to students for whom such experiences are often out of reach. We also seek to provide students with the space, time, and support necessary to produce advanced creative and scholarly work. Our aim is for every student to discover a greater capacity for independent work than they had coming into the seminar.

High-impact practices are key college experiences that have been shown to facilitate deep-level processing and increase student engagement, retention, and success. The Monson seminar is designed around the following high impact practices: common intellectual experiences, learning communities, undergraduate research, community-based learning, and capstone projects. In targeting high-need students, the Seminar addresses inequalities resulting from the exclusivity of most high-impact experiences, which often cost students more in terms of both time and money.

Seminar students participate in an honors-level interdisciplinary course and work with an advisor on an independent creative project. Students received full tuition fellowships, three meals a day, and both studio and living space for the duration of the Seminar.