In addition to their Mentored Academic Pathway (MAP) Advisor, each new student is assigned a Student Success Advisor, a Career Advisor and a peer advisor. Advising teams are led by the faculty advisor and offer each student academic, peer and staff support throughout their transition to Wheaton.
Student Success Advisors are professional staff in Academic Advising connected with the MAP advisor, and partners in supporting students during the critical transition of the first year and developing an ongoing advising relationship throughout the remainder of the college experience. The Career Advisor links the academic experience to career goals with exploration and planning of pathways to support future career aspirations. Advising by both the Student Success Advisor and Career Advisor is holistic, connecting the academic experience with other facets of a student’s life. Advisors are inclusive, proactive and intentional in their efforts to address student needs and collaborate with the campus community in the transformative student experience of a Wheaton education and beyond.
Preceptors are academic peer advisors who assist new students throughout orientation and their first year at Wheaton. They provide peer perspectives on academic issues and responsibilities, guide students in their preliminary course selections in preparation for meetings with their faculty advisors, and serve as study-strategy tutors, offering reading, time management, note-taking and test-taking strategies.
Mentored Academic Pathway Advisors
All first-year students are assigned a faculty advisor when they first begin their Wheaton career, who will serve as their Mentored Academic Pathway (MAP) Advisor. Together, the student will engage in dialogue and planning with the faculty advisor as part of the MAP. The MAP is designed as a series of reflections that students engage with over the 4 years at Wheaton. Students will respond to these questions - the mode of that response may be writing but could also be a video or alternative types of reflections. These reflections will be shared with the MAP Advisor. Students develop a relationship with their MAP Advisor and remain with this advisor through graduation.
Major advisor
Once a student declares a major at Wheaton, typically during the sophomore year, they will be advised by a major advisor. Assigned by the departments, major advisors help students find courses inside and outside of the major that fit their field of interest, find faculty who share their academic focus, and assist students in setting and making progress on their postgraduate goals.
Pre-professional advisors
In addition to advisors assigned by the college, Wheaton students interested in a range of professional fields may also consult faculty with expertise in those professions. Students may seek pre-professional advice in the fields of medicine and health, education, law, business, communications, theology, engineering, and art.
The Filene Center for Academic Advising and Career Services
Wheaton College offers professional academic and career advising and learning support through the Filene Center for Academic Advising and Career Services, which consists of four units: Academic Advising, Career Services, Tutoring/Learning Assistance, and Accessibility Services.
Academic Advising
Student Success Advisors in Academic Advising are available to address specialized academic concerns (domestic off-campus study, study skills, learning differences, graduate school, competitive fellowships, scholarships and advising for students at academic risk). They serve as part of a team of advisors who are available to help students to meet their goals and maximize their success.
Career Services
Career Services provides expert career guidance to liberal arts students through a customized career development process. Our approach includes interactive and educational programming and resources that enable students to understand and articulate the real-world application of intellectual and practical skills gained in and out of the classroom. We work to cultivate an expansive career community that engages students, faculty, staff, parents, alumnae/i and employers to support each student’s lifelong career journey.
Career Services in the Filene Center assists students in the pursuit of meaningful course-connected and career-related experiences. The center’s goals are for students to discover, fully explore, and reflect upon their academic, co-curricular, civic and professional interests. Students work with Career Services in multiple ways through individual advising, workshops, information sessions and peer advising. During advising conversations, students gain an understanding of their aspirations, skills and strengths and set actionable goals. To support advising, students also utilize the alumni network through LinkedIn and a variety of cutting-edge software platforms.
Experiential Learning
Learning from experience provides Wheaton students with the opportunity to preview potential career paths, experience “real world” connections to their course work, choose their academic majors and minors with greater discernment, and learn more about their emerging interests, strengths and values. Whether undertaken during summers, winter breaks or incorporated into the academic year, internships, jobs, practicums, and co-curricular activities enable students to experience and learn from and about the world beyond Wheaton. Students partner with staff to explore opportunities in a wide variety of organizations, including museums, banks, hospitals, national media outlets, social service organizations, government agencies, and investment companies. Through this advising partnership, students learn to reflect upon and connect their interests and values to future career and educational choices.
By developing a relationship with their academic and career advising teams early, and continuing to meet with them often, students can integrate experiences with their academic interests, and build a portfolio of skills and relevant activities to successfully pursue graduate school, national fellowships, and competitive employment opportunities. This synthesis of knowledge and skills from both inside, and outside the classroom is the essence of the Wheaton Edge.
Summer Fellowships
With the support of foundations, alumni and college funds, Career Services administers several funding opportunities which award stipends from $2000 to $5000 to students who secure summer internships, service experiences, and/ or structured independent research in the United States and abroad.
Balfour/Community/Trustee Scholars
Some students arrive as merit scholars to Wheaton and have a summer stipend designated for use during the summer immediately following their sophomore or junior year. Career Services collaborates with these students to explore options for how they can use their stipend to support their summer experiences or take advantage of a global faculty-led trip.
Off-campus Jobs
Career Services collects local and regional off-campus job postings for summer and term-time employment. Our staff partners with students to explore part-time and/or seasonal summer job options. Students can attend thematic workshops offered throughout the academic year pertaining to part-time and summer job search strategies.
Workshops and Programs
As one center, both Academic Advising and Career Services offer workshops throughout the year on such topics as self-exploration, academic planning, navigating opportunities for study abroad, undergraduate research and post-graduate study, résumé writing, researching, interviewing, and job-search techniques and strategies. Students can develop and refine their pathways that include academic pursuits or career and professional skills through frequent workshop attendance and use of the center’s resources.
The Wheaton Edge
The Wheaton Edge combines the guarantee of funding for experiential learning with the high-quality educational program for which the college is known, including:
- personalized support for each student from professors and staff to set goals, plan a course of study and explore their interests on campus and beyond.
- a rigorous, interdisciplinary liberal arts education through our Connection and Compass curriculums that provides numerous opportunities to link the liberal arts to the wider world,
- a residential campus experience directed by students, offering myriad opportunities to shape the Wheaton experience and develop leadership skills.
The Wheaton Edge formalizes the college’s long-standing commitment to providing an outstanding liberal arts education that includes real-world experience. Students will become eligible for summer funding by working with Career Services over the course of several semesters, culminating in the sophomore or junior year. The Center’s program for internship preparation is designed to ensure that students are prepared to make the most of their funded experience. The college has more than 25 years of experience in actively helping students explore their interests through internships, research projects, service work and other experiential learning opportunities. It’s an integral part of the program that enables our students to follow their passion and achieve success after graduation.
TutoringTutoring/Learning Assistance
Peer tutors facilitate tutoring and collaborative learning through the Center, which is open during business hours most of the academic year as a study space for students. The Filene Center in Kollett Hall also provides Windows and Macintosh computers, laser printers, scanners, photocopiers and a fax machine for students. Students can access course-specific software, Web, and writing applications or just take a quick look at email as they pass through.
The Center is part of an ongoing planning project to provide technology-rich workstations, student-centered services and inviting learning spaces. The Center’s labs and computer classrooms comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and multiple stations are equipped with universal access technologies, including specialized software and scanners that may assist patrons with hearing, visual and learning impairments. Workshops are available to augment instruction from professors. The Filene Center for Academic Advising and Career Services also offers resources, programs and services for faculty and for students to enhance teaching and learning across Wheaton’s liberal arts curriculum.
Learning Assistance supports collaborative student learning through the College Writing Program and Subject Tutoring and by coordinating a robust tutoring program that offers students the opportunity to work with department-selected peer tutors trained and paid by the center in introductory and intermediate courses across the curriculum. Students desiring to work in this program, either as tutors or tutees, will find information and schedules at http://wheatoncollege.edu/tutoring/.
College Writing Program
The Wheaton College English Department oversees the College Writing Program, keeping a long-standing commitment to writing as an intellectual activity. Every member of our English Department teaches First-Year Composition (English 101), which is required of all first-year students, except those who have passed the Advanced Placement examination with a 4 or 5, or have passed the Wheaton exemption examination. But attention to writing proficiency does not end with the completion of a student’s first year. Supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, the new Wheaton Curriculum allows each department to develop its own discipline-situated approach to writing. Within each department students both write to learn and learn to write.
Support for student writing is provided through consultations with our writing associate and our peer writing tutor program. Our writing associates teach First-Year Writing and consult individually with students about their writing projects and processes. Our peer writing tutor program offers a collaborative learning model for students at all stages in their writing development.
Evidence of writing beyond the classroom takes many forms, including publications such as Midnight Oil and Rushlight, which are written, edited and managed by Wheaton students.
Tutoring
Peer writing tutors, trained and supervised by the Writing Program, provide assistance on written assignments. This tutoring is available in the Kollett Center; hours are posted each semester. In addition, writing associates offer professional assistance to students on special projects.
Quantitative associates in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science offer professional assistance with quantitative questions. In addition, peer Quantitative Analysis (QA) tutors provide assistance to students in need of fundamental quantitative skills development necessary for success in quantitative and quantitative-influenced fields such as statistics, calculus and mathematical concepts. Like the writing tutors, the QA tutors work out of Kollett Hall, and their hours are posted each semester.
Course tutors, trained and supervised by a faculty coordinator, provide academic tutoring in all academic areas at Wheaton. Tutoring is offered on a drop-in basis on Sunday through Thursday evenings according to the schedule, which is published each semester. In addition to the study skills tutoring offered by preceptors, the Filene Center for Academic Advising and Career Services offers academic success workshops throughout the academic year. Topics covered include time management, major declaration and academic support groups.
Accessibility Services
The Filene Center for Academic Advising and Career Services also provides services for Wheaton students with disabilities. Professional staff in Accessibility Services is available to discuss accommodations and services that are available to students with documented disabilities. For more information, see the Accessibility Services page on the college website.
Marshall Center for Intercultural Learning
The Marshall Center for Intercultural Learning works in conjunction with Wheaton faculty, staff and students to provide leadership, education, support and resources around issues of diversity and inclusiveness.
The Marshall Center exists to affirm each student’s unique identities, to build a community that draws from them and to cultivate leaders who will introduce to the world the value of human diversity. Each and every member of the Wheaton community has a role and responsibility in this process.
The center’s offerings include a pre-orientation program, mentoring and coaching with individual students and clubs, providing leadership development as well as intergroup dialogues and heritage month celebrations.
All programs of the Marshall Center are an extension of the college’s commitment to diversity as an educational asset.
Affirm identity
Each and every member of the community should see his or her experience reflected in the curriculum, in co-curricular programs and in social events. One example of how the center affirms identity is annual theme month programming. Celebrations include Latino/a Heritage Month, National Coming Out Day and Pride Week, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Native Peoples’ Heritage Month, Black History Month, and APIMESA (Asian Pacific Islander Middle Eastern South Asian) History Month. The Center supports students, faculty and staff who wish to develop events and programs to recognize, celebrate and educate about many aspects of identity, including ethnic, racial, gender, sexual identity or orientation, or religious facets of identity.
Build community
In addition to recognizing his or her identity at Wheaton, each person should have the opportunity to learn about and share in the identities of others. Community-building programs include our Intercultural Pre-Orientation Program, monthly theme workshops for students at different points in their Wheaton careers, our specialized programming for science students, and our women and gender programs. Through such programs the center creates safe spaces for asking questions and expressing curiosity about experiences different from one’s own.
Cultivate leaders
The Center aims to work individually and collectively with students toward achieving curricular as well as co-curricular success. Cultivating academic leadership and excellence through mentoring, cohort groups and individual academic advising allows our students to set meaningful, attainable goals. Students learn about the diverse array of academic opportunities available, including travel and research fellowships, graduate school opportunities, and postgraduate fellowships and scholarships. Additionally, the Center advises and mentors students to develop leadership abilities outside of the classroom.
Through their involvement in campus organizations, student, staff and faculty committees, curricular and co-curricular initiatives and other activities of personal interest, students are able to develop and practice their growing leadership skills.
All programs of the Marshall Center are an extension of the college’s commitment to diversity as an educational asset.
Center for Global Education
The Center for Global Education (CGE) serves as a hub of resources for students, faculty and staff who wish to engage with the world. We offer opportunities for students of all majors and interests to study and intern in some of the most unique locations around the world. The Center is also a place our international students can come for that additional bit of support as they adjust to their home away from home. Additionally, the Center supports faculty as they develop academic experiences that help students encounter, negotiate and understand global issues in relation to their own lives.
Students interested in study abroad opportunities may consult one of the advisors in the Center for Global Education. Both peer and professional advisors are available to assist Wheaton students as they explore global learning opportunities.
The Center offers a wide range of study abroad programs, the result of numerous connections and partnerships with overseas institutions. These programs are located in countries as diverse as Australia, South Africa, Argentina, China, Denmark, Bhutan, Japan and Botswana. As extensions of Wheaton’s curriculum, these opportunities enrich the academic experience of students and provide unique cross-cultural insights. Generally, students participate in study abroad during their junior year, but sophomores (second semester) and seniors (first semester) can also receive consideration in relation to their plan of study and preparation. Most forms of financial aid and merit scholarships may be used on Wheaton study abroad programs. The Center provides services to Wheaton’s growing and important population of international students, visiting scholars and language assistants. It works closely with the Worldfest Committee and other student groups to bring cross-cultural programming to campus. The Center is committed to institutionalizing global education values on campus— one of the significant ways in which Wheaton is transforming itself to make its educational experience relevant for the 21st century. For further information, visit the Center for Global Education (5 Howard Street) or visit our website to learn more about our Global and Intercultural offerings.
Wallace Library
The Madeleine Clark Wallace Library, housed in a historic building at the heart of the Wheaton College campus, serves as the intellectual hub of the college. The library connects students, faculty, and staff to a world of ideas and information, and creates an environment for self-exploration and boundless learning. Librarians, technologists, and staff support all members of the community in their learning, research, and teaching, with a primary focus on student success.
The library’s instruction program connects with more than 150 classes across the curriculum each year. This instruction helps students develop critical research and technology skills. Specialized instruction in the Archives exposes students to research using primary source materials.
Library holdings in print and electronic formats include more than 500,000 volumes, a comprehensive selection of periodicals, audiovisual materials, and research databases. The Marion B. Gebbie Archives and Special Collections house extensive unique physical and digital collections.
To quickly locate and access materials beyond Wheaton, community members can take advantage of Wheaton’s membership in the Higher Education Library and Information Network (HELIN) Consortium, a regional group of academic libraries. Other cooperative borrowing and lending agreements provide additional access to materials not available in local or HELIN collections.
The library provides public computing, printing, and wireless access. The library’s public computers offer productivity software, specialized academic software, and assistive technology applications. Listening and viewing facilities for multimedia materials are also available. Collaborative workrooms, group study spaces, individual carrels, study tables and comfortable seating arrangements are located throughout the building.
The library partners with IT to provide access to discipline-specific hardware and software in computer labs across campus, including specialized resources for graphic design, film, photography, foreign languages, psychology, physics, astronomy, biology, statistical analysis, and geographical information systems (GIS).
Office of the Registrar
The Office of the Registrar handles all matters pertaining to course registration and academic records, including transcripts and letters certifying enrollment at the college. The schedule of classes, catalog and course selection process, through which students can complete their registration (as well as many forms and publications), are available online through the Office of the Registrar. Declarations of majors and minors are filed in this office by the established deadlines. Students can also find answers to many of their academic, registration, and graduation questions at the information desk in the Office of the Registrar.
Elisabeth W. Amen Nursery School
The Elisabeth Amen Nursery School at Wheaton College is the laboratory school for the Psychology Department. Students from Developmental Psychology are required to perform observation at the nursery school as a part of the course requirements. In the Developmental Lab course, upperclass psychology majors conduct research on various topics. In addition, seniors from the Psychology Department, as well as other departments such as Anthropology and Sociology conduct research as a part of their senior thesis.
The Elisabeth Amen Nursery School has been a site for child study and research since its beginning in 1931. The primary functions of the laboratory school are to demonstrate good nursery school practices, provide a sound educational setting for preschool children and serve as an active center for child study and research. Thus, in addition to providing a supportive atmosphere for preschoolers, the nursery school offers a wide range of experiences to college students in the fields of psychology, education, family studies and related areas. The children in this laboratory school benefit from expert guidance by teachers and college professors actively working in the fields of child development and early childhood education; college students gain hands-on experience in both teaching and research.
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