Independent Study

What exactly is I.S.?

For more than 60 years, every Wooster graduate has had the experience of creating something genuinely new and valuable through I.S.: Independent Study.

I.S. is a year-long project that allows you to throw yourself into an idea you care about. It's like being in a class of one. (Literally. I.S. takes the place of one of your four classes each semester of senior year.)

With the one-on-one support and guidance of a faculty adviser in your senior year, you'll take a journey of self-discovery — culminating in a major research paper, an art exhibit, or a performance — that pulls together what you've learned and shows others where you've been.

It's a significant piece of work, but you don't go there all at once. Wooster's curriculum is structured to prepare you, from your first semester on campus, for the kind of scholarly, critical inquiry that I.S. demands.

And if you happen to be a philosophy major, you might wind up with President Grant Cornwell as your adviser. Listen to what he had to say about the process when he was a guest on "The I.S. Show" on Woo91.

Don't just take our word for it

I.S. really is the heart and soul of a Wooster education, affecting everything from how professors teach introductory classes to why students are exposed to research opportunities as early as the second semester of their first year. Read what the Association of American Colleges & Universities had to say about I.S., when they featured it as an exemplary undergraduate program in the October 2010 edition of AAC&U News.