About the College of Charleston

Place Matters. The College of Charleston is located in the center of Charleston, SC, America's most beautifully preserved historic city. The lands and waters surrounding the peninsula are rich in flora and fauna, making the area attractive to visitors and residents, economic developers and environmentalists alike. Charleston's arts and crafts, architecture, food, customs, and accents reflect the diversity of the Lowcountry culture with its vibrant blend of European, African, and Native American influences.

Making Connections. Charleston as a destination has much to offer; Charleston as an academic laboratory has even more. The peninsula city, with its unique architectural and historical character and its port and harbors, is ideal for programs focused on urban growth and development or on historic preservation or on Southern distinctiveness. The colonial city was ethnically diverse, and its African connections can be studied at the College's Avery Research Center and its Jewish ones at its Jewish Studies Center. The multi-faceted tourist industry presents numerous opportunities for research as well. For those interested in international business, Charleston offers one of the nation's busiest ports; for those in hospitality management, an array of world-class restaurants and hotels. Promising artists develop their skills by participating in internationally acclaimed arts festivals, such as Spoleto, U.S.A.

The surrounding Lowcountry presents additional opportunities for scientific, environmental, and cultural studies. Laboratories at Fort Johnson and Dixie Plantation support strong programs in marine biology and the environmental sciences. Ecosystem concerns have led to a new collaborative program with the Medical University of South Carolina in environmental genomics. Building on the Lowcountry's historic links to the Atlantic World and beyond, the College offers interdisciplinary programs in African, European, Asian, Latin American and Caribbean, and Women's Studies and international exchange programs with institutions on six continents.

Consistent with its public mission, the College is a community resource in the broadest sense of the term. It takes pride in having good relationships with a broad range of educational institutions, governments, businesses and industries, community agencies, neighborhoods, and alumni. In addition to its undergraduate programs, the College offers graduate and professional degree and certificate programs that address local and state needs. The Lowcountry Graduate Center—a consortium involving the College of Charleston, The Citadel, and the Medical University —was created in 2001 to meet the educational demands of the area's businesses.

Four Centuries of Vision. Founded in 1770, the College of Charleston is now in its fourth century of serving the people of the state, nation, and world. Committed to becoming a nationally preeminent Public Liberal Arts and Sciences University for the twenty-first century, the institution offers a rigorous curriculum, grounded in a broad general education program and enriched by the availability of over sixty challenging majors and minors as well as numerous interdisciplinary offerings and programs. A thriving Honors Program provides additional opportunities for student-faculty interaction. Students choose the College for its combination of small-college feel and small-university size and complexity and for its integration of professional offerings with the liberal arts and sciences.

The hallmark of the student-centered education provided by the College of Charleston is exemplary teaching by a faculty of 502 teacher-scholars who engage the students through exceptional instruction and scholarship. The commitment to a teacher-scholar model reflects the College's conviction that teaching and scholarship are integral and necessary parts of a whole and as such should be nurtured and rewarded. Intellectually engaged and engaging faculty are provided sabbatical leave support, grants for collaborative and individual research projects, pedagogical workshops to keep them abreast of current developments in university teaching, and travel grants to allow them and their students to attend conferences and to share their scholarship with others in their fields. With a student-faculty ratio of 14 to 1, there are plentiful opportunities for individual mentoring.

One of the College's core values is devotion to the intellectual, ethical, and social development of each student. Its 9,866 undergraduates and 1,741 graduates are fully engaged in an active learning environment that combines traditional knowledge acquisition with learning by doing. Through research opportunities, internships, independent studies, service learning, study abroad, and other curricular and co-curricular activities, students apply the critical and analytical skills acquired in the classroom and develop an appreciation for perspectives other than their own and a respect for democratic institutions and governance. As the College's Diversity Initiative and core values affirm, students, faculty, and staff exhibit a high level of social responsibility and share a commitment to local, national, and global communities.

The College of Charleston's distinctive education program is offered in facilities that mesh respect for the historic setting with state-of-the-art technology. These include a new library, a new building for the School of Business and Economics, and a new Multicultural Center. A new Education Building, a new wing of the School of the Arts, a new Student Center, a new Science Center, and a new sports arena will all open in the next few years. The entire School of the Arts will be renovated, and the athletic center will include renovations for the exercise science and physical education major.