Shimer College
in Chicago, United StatesCategory: Attraction
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3411 South State Street, Chicago, IL 60616, USA Print route »
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Shimer College (pronounced /ˈʃaɪmər/ SHY-mər) is an American Great Books college in Chicago, Illinois. Founded as the Mt. Carroll Seminary in Mount Carroll, Illinois in 1853, the school became affiliated with the University of Chicago and was renamed the Frances Shimer Academy in 1896. It was renamed Shimer College in 1950, when it began offering a four-year curriculum based on the Hutchins Plan of the University of Chicago. Although the University of Chicago parted with Shimer (and the Hutchins' Plan) in 1958, Shimer has continued to utilize a version of that curriculum. The college left Mount Carroll for Waukegan in 1978, moving to Chicago in 2006.Its academic program is based on a core curriculum of sixteen required courses in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. All courses are small seminars with no more than twelve students, and are based on original sources from a list of about 200 core texts broadly based on the Great Books canon. Classroom instruction is Socratic discussion. Considerable writing is required, including two comprehensive examinations and a senior thesis. Students are admitted primarily on the basis of essays and interviews; no minimum grades or test scores are required. Shimer has one of the highest alumni doctorate rates in the country.
The college occupies a complex designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on the main campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago's Near South Side. The American Institute of Architects has called the IIT campus one of the 200 most significant works of architecture in the United States, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Shimer is governed internally by an assembly in which all community members have a vote.
According to The New York Times, students "share a love of books [and] a disdain for the conventional style of education. Many say they did not have a good high school experience". Students, who tend to be individualistic and creative thinkers, are encouraged to ask questions. Shimer has historically averaged 125 students, and enrolled 97 in 2014. Most Shimer alumni go on to graduate studies. Notable alumni include writers, political theorists, inventors, avant-garde artists and musicians, politicians and computing pioneers.
