Hampshire College

Many students come to Hampshire with multiple talents or interests that coalesce around questions that can be addressed only from the perspectives of several disciplines. For example, problems of war and peace, of environmental policy, and of the uses of new information technology demand scientific as well as political, economic, and ethical understanding. A student may wish to combine talents within the arts, such as writing and photography, with a particular cultural interest. Within a traditional framework of required majors and academic departments, these students would not be able to fully explore the relationships among their interests.

To encourage such multidisciplinary work, Hampshire has replaced single-subject departments with five interdisciplinary Schools-Cognitive Science; Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies; Interdisciplinary Arts; Natural Science; and Social Science. This flexible structure permits a great richness and variety of academic activity.

Students may design academic programs encompassing several disciplines or choose to study a single field in depth after satisfying distribution requirements. In either case, Hampshire's Schools serve as vehicles for students' intellectual explorations, not as a rigid framework into which they must fit. Faculty also take advantage of this arrangement. In jointly taught courses and on student advisory committees, faculty from different disciplines and different Schools collaborate with one another, enriching their students' scholarship and each other's with their several perspectives.

• Curriculum
• Hampshire's Five Interdisciplinary Schools
• Divisional System
• Areas of Study
• Courses
• Centers and Programs
• January Term
• Academic Resources
• International Programs
• Office of the Dean of Faculty
• The Five College System