At Hampshire you’ll take responsibility for your education and design your own academic program in collaboration with your faculty advisors.
Guided by our accomplished faculty, you’ll forge your own path, taking roads not already paved for you.
In the process you’ll acquire the ability to seek out people to learn with and from, figure out how to access resources and solve problems relevant to your interests, and work flexibly and confidently to meet unexpected challenges and opportunities.
It’s more than a life skill. It’s an outlook on life.
Hampshire's Divisional framework guides you in building your academic concentration or focus of study and completing a year-long independent project in your final year.
You'll develop competence in project-based learning across all four years.
Your academic pursuits will move you from closely scaffolded projects in Div I that include collaborative learning to projects in Div II that support your growth in independent work and result in your culminating Div III independent project.
The Divisional Seminars are a cornerstone of Hampshire’s Divisional system, and support the growth of students across their academic trajectory, the key to transitions between Divisions.
Your first year emphasizes learning across a wide range of critical, scientific, and creative approaches through our transdisciplinary curriculum, gaining skills for learning in community with others, and engaging in project-based learning in supported contexts.
You'll be mentored by an advisor, and through our advising networks of students, staff, and faculty.
The second and third years are all about deep inquiry into your interests, strengthening your connections in communities of learners, and growth toward independent project-based learning. Your advisors and advising networks can advise you about classes to take, internships, studying abroad, and other opportunities to pursue your passions.
The fourth year is your chance to push your learning further, take risks, and tackle the meaningful challenge you’ve envisioned.
Do the research no one has ever done. Build a robot that teaches itself to climb. Write a textbook that revolutionizes how middle-school science or history is taught.
How should we act on our responsibilities in the face of changing climate?
How do we disrupt and dismantle white supremacy?
How do we decide what constitutes truth in a "post-truth" era?
How can art and creative practices engage trauma?
