Structured Liberal Education

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Structured Liberal Education

Structured Liberal Education (SLE) (pronounced "slee") is an academically demanding program at Stanford University

Stanford University

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Structured Liberal Education (SLE) (pronounced "slee") is an academically demanding program at Stanford University

Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
that offers an alternative three-course sequence for freshmen to fulfill their Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) and Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) requirements. With a year-long schedule of nine units in the fall and winter quarters and ten in the spring quarter, SLE is unique in its intellectual rigor, multi-disciplinary approach, and residence-based structure.

All SLE participants live, dine, and attend class in the same residence hall, Florence Moore. They live in either the all-freshman dorm, Alondra, which is made up of half SLE students and half IHUM students, or in one of the two four-class dorms, Cardenal and Faisan. Many of the upperclassmen in Cardenal and Faisan are former SLE students, which helps maintain an SLE community spanning the different years. In the main lounge of Florence Moore, known as the SLE lounge, students attend lectures given by professors within many departments at Stanford and by visiting guest lecturers. In addition, students participate in small-group sections, in which they discuss the lectures and assigned literature from SLE's extensive, diverse, and ever-evolving reading list. Films, often relating to the material of study, are screened weekly, and student-produced plays are regularly part of the syllabus. Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" is traditionally performed in the fall. SLE also provides freshman with intensive individual writing tutorials.

Structured Liberal Education was the brainchild of Stanford history professor Mark Mancall. Internationally-renowned political theorist Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt was an influential Germany-Jewish political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she always refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theory because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on...
also played an instrumental role in SLE's creation, having been one of the original proponents of the program's enactment. In some respects, Stanford's SLE is comparable to other notable "Great Books" programs, such as Directed Studies

Directed Studies at Yale University

Directed Studies at Yale University is a selective humanities study program for freshmen. It follows the Great Books of the Western culture tradition, and resembles Princeton University's Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture, Columbia University's Core Curriculum , Georgetown University's Liberal Arts Seminar, the University of Chi...
at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, Yale is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher education in the United States and is a member of the Ivy League....
, the Liberal Arts Seminar at Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a Society of Jesus private university located in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Father John Carroll founded the school in 1789, though its roots extend back to 1634....
, the Core Curriculum at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York , is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights, Manhattan neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City....
, the Core Curriculum at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park, Chicago neighborhood of Chicago. Although an older university by the same name existed prior to its founding, the modern University of Chicago credits its founding to the oil magnate John D....
, and the curriculum at St. John's College

St. John's College, U.S.

St. John's College is a liberal arts college with two U.S. campuses: Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1696 as a preparatory school, King William's School, the institution received a collegiate charter in 1784....
, but owing to Mancall's scholarly interests in East Asia, SLE's reading list is more culturally diverse.

Recently, Roland Greene, a faculty member of the English and Comparative Literature departments, was named the new program director ^{11

Year 1 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.The preceding year is 1 BC in the widely used Gregorian calendar or in its predecessor, the Julian calendar, neither of which has a "Year zero"....}.

SLE is now under the auspices of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, which provides intellectual and academic support and is the base of many of the faculty who participate in the program. The administrative home of SLE is the IHUM Program.

Citations

¹ http://ual.stanford.edu/AP/univ_req/IHUM_SLE/SLE.html

Structured Liberal Education

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