College of Wooster

College of Wooster

The College of Wooster is a private liberal arts college primarily known for its ‘Independent Study’ program. It has roughly 2,000 students and is located in Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio (approximately 60 miles (97 km) south of Cleveland). Founded in 1866 by the Presbyterian church as the University of Wooster, it was from its creation a co-educational institution. The school is a member of The Five Colleges of Ohio and the Great Lakes Colleges Association. As of June 2009, Wooster’s endowment stood at approximately $242 million.

Wooster is one of forty colleges named in Loren Pope’s influential book Colleges That Change Lives, in which he called it his ‘…original best-kept secret in higher education.’ It is consistently ranked among the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, according to U.S. News and World Report. In US News’ ‘Best Colleges 2011′, Wooster ranked fifth among national liberal arts colleges in the category of ‘Best Undergraduate Teaching,’ the second consecutive year in the top ten.

College of Wooster Rankings in 2010

• BEST UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING PROGRAM RANKING IN U.S.
• TOP 100 PRIVATE COLLEGES RANKING
• TOP 100 LIBERAL ART UNIVERSITY / COLLEGE IN 2010

Schools of College of Wooster

AREAS OF STUDY

College of Wooster News

• Class of 2012 Receives Final Instructions for the Journey Ahead - Tue, 15 May 2012
  Members of the Class of 2012 received plenty of encouragement — and some timely advice — as they reflected on the past four years and pondered the future during The College of Wooster’s 142nd Commencement ceremony on Monday morning (May 14) in the Oak Grove.

• Triplets Share Uncommon Variety of Common Interests - Mon, 14 May 2012
  Triplets are known to have a lot in common — well beyond their physical resemblance — but The College of Wooster’s Haug sisters have taken their similarities to an entirely new level.

• Lisa Wong Named Director of The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus - Sun, 13 May 2012
  Lisa Wong, director of the Wooster Chorus and the Wooster Singers at The College of Wooster, has been named director of The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus. A member of Wooster’s faculty since 2009, Wong also serves as the assistant director of choruses with the Cleveland Orchestra, and she will continue in that capacity

• Students Attend Global Health Conference with Lilly Project Grant - Sun, 13 May 2012
  Global health issues might not resonate with a majority of college students, but Samuel Kitara and Erin Plews-Ogan, are imploring their classmates to at least consider the size and scope of the problem and the opportunities for students to explore the field and become engaged.

• Focus of Final Exam Shifts from Theory to Practice - Thu, 10 May 2012
  WOOSTER, Ohio — Final exams don’t usually look like this. Instead of a neatly printed, carefully stapled packet in a quiet, sterile classroom, students in Matthew Broda’s Interdisciplinary Fine Arts class (a.k.a. EDUC140A) found themselves in a large ornate dining hall with more than 50 young children anxiously anticipating the adventure that awaited them on Monday night.

• RePlay Session Transforms Toys for Children with Disabilities - Wed, 09 May 2012
  WOOSTER, Ohio — When student volunteers arrived at the recent RePlay-for-Kids work session in The College of Wooster’s Center for Diversity and Global Engagement (CDGE), they were greeted by dozens of new or gently used toys — but these students didn’t come to play around. Their mission was to help install alternative switches on the battery-operated toys so that RePlay, a nonprofit organization that repairs and adapts toys and assistive devices for children with disabilities, could redistribute them to organizations and agencies for young people with special needs, including Ida Sue School in Wooster.

• Wooster Students Make a Case for Undergraduate Research in Nation’s Capital - Mon, 07 May 2012
  Wooster’s Nikolai Radzinski and Lindsey Bowman shared their thoughts with senators and representatives after being chosen to present their research and spread the good news about undergraduate research at last week’s Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Posters on the Hill on Capitol Hill. Radzinski, a junior biochemistry and molecular biology major, and Bowman, a senior geology major, were two of 73 students selected from a highly competitive field of more than 850 applicants to participate in a poster session and reach out to members of Congress, congressional staff members, federal government officials, and others in attendance.

• Senior Research Symposium Reinforces the Value of Lifelong Learning - Tue, 01 May 2012
  WOOSTER, Ohio — Don Van Cleef sees learning as a perpetual process. A member of the Class of 1951 — the first to experience Wooster’s Independent Study (I.S.) program as a requirement for all seniors — Van Cleef and his wife, Mina, a 1953 Wooster graduate, came to campus on Friday for the fifth annual Senior Research Symposium with one simple objective in mind — to learn.

• Wooster Faculty, Students, and Alumni Share Research at Anthropological Meeting - Fri, 27 Apr 2012
  The 2012 meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society featured presentations by a number of current and former College of Wooster students and faculty members, and marked the beginning of Nick Kardulias’ tenure as president of the organization. Kardulias, professor of sociology, anthropology, and archaeology at Wooster, also served as program chair for the conference and chaired a session, titled “Historical Archaeology in the New World.”

• Power Wheelchair Exhibition Brings Admiring Fans to Their Feet - Tue, 24 Apr 2012
  WOOSTER, Ohio — Timken Gymnasium was the site of another competitive athletic contest on Friday night, but this one was played on wheels. The inaugural power wheelchair soccer exhibition at The College of Wooster, sponsored by the newly formed student organization, PUSH (People United through Sports and Health) in collaboration with Wooster Community Hospital and the Adaptive Sports Program of Ohio (APSO), drew a large and admiring crowd. The event was designed to raise awareness about adaptive sports, where athletes with disabilities can compete with one another.