New College of Florida

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Template:FLSUS taxobox New College of Florida is a small, nationally recognized, public liberal arts college, located in Sarasota on the former Edith and Charles Ringling estate, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Composed of 74 faculty and more than 700 students [1], New College is known for its high academic standards, narrative evaluation system, and its focus on independent research and student-driven curriculum.

1 Distinguishing academic features
2 History
3 External rankings and reviews
4 Alumni
5 Police department
6 See also
7 External links

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Distinguishing academic features

Four core principles form the base of New College's academic philosophy: (1) Each student is responsible in the last analysis for his or her own education, (2) The best education demands a joint search for learning by exciting teachers and able students, (3) Students' progress should be based on demonstrated competence and real mastery rather than on the accumulation of credits and grades, (4) Students should have, from the outset, opportunities to explore in depth, areas of interest to them. To the end of putting this philosophy into practice, New College utilizes a unique academic program that differs substantially from those used by most other educational institutions in four key ways: [2]

Narrative evaluations: At the completion of each course, students receive an evaluation written by the instructor critiquing their performance and course work, along with a satisfactory/unsatisfactory/incomplete designation. Letter grades and grade-point-averages are not used at New College. [3]
Contract System: At the start of each semester, students negotiate a contract with their faculty adviser, specifying their courses of study and expectations for the semester. At the completion of the term, the academic adviser compares the student's actual performance with the requirements defined in the contract, and determines whether the student has "passed" the contract, or not. Among other requirements, completing seven contracts is a prerequisite to graduation. [4]
Independent Study Projects: The month of January is reserved for independent projects at New College, when no traditional courses are held. Independent Study Projects run the gamut from short, in-depth, academic research projects to internships, lab work, and international exchanges. Students are required to complete three independent study projects prior to graduating. [5]
Senior Thesis: Each student is required to write an original and lengthy thesis in their discipline, and defend it before a committee of at least three faculty. Depending on the area of concentration of each student, a senior thesis can take the form of an original research paper, performing and documenting a scientific or social-scientific experiment or research study, or an original composition. This requirement is usually completed during the final two semesters of a student's fourth year.[6]

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History

Image:Ncfstud-fountain-63.jpg Image:Palmcourt.jpg

Founded in 1960 by local civic leaders as a private college for academically talented students, New College opened its doors in 1964 to a premier class of 101 students. By 1972, New College's ranks had swelled to more than 500 students and it had become known for its teaching-focused faculty, its unique courses and curricula, and its fiercely independent and hard working students. [7]

As the 1970s progressed, although New College's academic program continued to mature, inflation threatened to undermine the economic viability of the institution. In 1975, the University of South Florida [USF] expressed interest in buying the land and facilities of the near-bankrupt college, in order to establish a branch campus for Sarasota and Bradenton area. The New College trustees agreed to sell the campus for half its estimated value—a difference of several million dollars—on the condition that New College be allowed to continue to operate on the following terms:

The New College program would receive the same funding, per-student, as other programs received for USF undergraduates, per-student
The New College trustees would become the New College Foundation, and be permitted to privately raise the money necessary to supplant the USF undergraduate funds to reach the total necessary to run New College.

USF agreed. If the New College Foundation failed to raise the money--which seemed likely, given this was the purchase of a bankrupt college--then USF would have acquired the property at a substantial discount. Thus the "merger agreement" was signed, a legally-binding document that would govern New College and USF in their uneasy relationship for the next 25 years.

Four years later, in 1979, USF's expectation seemed to be coming true. The Foundation was in debt, and stated it would not be able to make its annual payment to USF in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement. The entire New College faculty received pink slips. The leadership asked Lt. General Rolland Heiser, who had recently retired from the U.S. Army and moved to Sarasota, to step in and put the Foundation's affairs in order to be dismantled. Heiser, the former Supreme Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe, did not accept this mission and instead began aggressively raising money. New College was saved.

As part of a major reorganization of Florida's public education system, in 2001, New College severed its ties with University of South Florida and became the eleventh independent school in the Florida State University System. As part of its establishment as an independent university, the University of South Florida was directed to relocate its facilities away from the New College campus.

Today, as Florida's independent honors college, New College retains its original distinctive academic program, while enjoying the benefits and accessibility that being a public university afford.

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External rankings and reviews

Image:Ncfclass.jpg External rankings at New College are a relatively new phenomenon, because during the school's 25-year affiliation with the University of South Florida and prior to gaining independent accreditation in 2004, New College was ineligible to be included in most rankings.

The 2006 US News and World Report rankings named New College the #3 Public Liberal Arts College in the United States and the #88 college in liberal arts colleges overall. [8] The 2007 edition of The Princeton Review named New College the #1 best value in public higher education, up from its #6 ranking in 2006. [9] Additionally, the 2006 edition of the Fiske Guide to Colleges named New College one of the nation's 45 "Best Buys" in higher education, marking the third time that New College has been included among the guide’s elite list of “Best Buys”. [10]

New College is also known for its record number of Fulbright fellows. According to a list compiled in November of 2005 by the Chronicle of Higher Education, New College ranked number 21 out of the 30 top Fulbright producing bachelor's institutions, and ranked #3 when adjusted for per capita percentage, closely behind Pitzer College and Claremont McKenna. [11] New College has produced 20 Fulbrights during the past 11 years, and 24 since the school's inception. [12] In 2005 year, Miranda Tedholm, Erica Haas, Talya Dayton, and Thomas Patteson are the newest additions to a growing list of Fulbright Fellows from New College [13]

In addition to New College's successes within the Fulbright program, New College students and faculty have consistently earned a number of other prestigious accolades, including National Institutes of Health Grants, Udall Scholarships, as well as National Science Foundation and Carnegie Fellowships. Most recently, New College alumnus Matthew Ramsey was awarded the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholarship, the most competitive and largest graduate scholarship in America.[14]

New College may be unique among U.S. colleges in that the percent of enrollees who graduate is low (about 60%, far below schools of similar academic caliber) yet the accomplishments of its graduates are, by most measures, extremely high. (For example, some claim that New College on a per capita basis produces more students who go on to earn social science PhDs than any other college.) This unusual combination is likely due to the combination of high academic standards with extreme emphasis on student self-direction.

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Alumni

New College's alumni are relatively few in number - about 4,000. A plurality of alumni live in Florida, but large clusters of alums gravitate to San Francisco, New York City and Boston.

Among the most prominent New College graduates include U.S. Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, productivity trainer and consultant David Allen, philosopher and New College professor Aron Edidin, mathematician and Cornell University professor William Thurston, and drug policy activist & MAPS Founder Rick Doblin.

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Police department

The New College of Florida Police Department (NCFPC) is the police department that serves New College of Florida and the University of South Florida Sarasota/Manatee campus in Sarasota, Florida. All members of the NCFPD are state certified police officers. They are vested with the same authority as the members of local police departments, and are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

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