Eckerd College (A College That Changes Lives) is located in St. Petersburg, Florida. On the beach. Gulf Coast. In. St. Petersburg. Florida. The temperature is an average 74° year round. And yes, tomorrow will be just as beautiful as today is. And so will the day after that. And likely the day after that as well.
But parents take heart! Eckerd is one of the 40 colleges that change lives. That means despite the waterfront views and pet friendly dorms, Eckerd is not for academic slackers. Faculty here are serious about developing students’ minds and making students into well rounded scholars. They help develop passions and interests while providing a supportive atmosphere where students can learn and grow. There are no advisors at Eckerd, only Mentors. And that distinction is one of the things that makes Eckerd the place it is.
This sense of mentorship and the importance of developing students over time goes back to Eckerd’s mission as a school. Eckerd’s charge is to change your life so that you can change the world. With small class sizes and Professor-Mentors to guide students, Eckerd provides an innovative liberal arts curriculum where students have multiple options for learning in multiple ways. Far from being an education that is about the acquisition of facts and figures, a modern liberal arts education is about preparing students for a rapidly changing and evolving world and work space. It’s about learning to use your creativity, your imagination, collaboration skills, communication skills, both verbal and written, analytic abilities, and interpersonal or “soft skills.”
Academically, Eckerd has an interesting approach to bringing students into the fold. Inventors of The Autumn Term, Eckerd doesn’t believe that a day or two, or even a week of orientation is enough to help freshmen make the transition to college. During the three week Autumn Term, you will take a one course seminar which is an introduction to college level thinking. Your seminar professor becomes your Mentor for your first year, and you will also get an upperclass-person as a peer mentor as well. Eckerd wants you to make the school your home and your center for learning but they don’t expect that you will come out of high school already knowing how to do everything they expect right away.
During your first year, you’ll take a class called Human Experience in which you will consider issues like justice, power, freedom, and global citizenship. In it you will read widely, write frequently, and use your communication skills with your peers and interact with speakers and writers. Students read a common texts and the authors of these texts will be there as part of the speaker series as well. These are big name people, Pulitzer Prize winners like Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique’s Journey, or Charles. M. Blow, author of Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Tracy Kidder, Dave Eggers, and Martha Craven Nussbaum have also been speakers in the last several years. This course is a firm grounding in the skills you need to be, not just successful in college, but successful people in the world.
This is just the beginning of the student centered model that Eckerd has in place. Professors offices are in high traffic areas: opening onto sidewalks, or in some cases the beach. Students are encouraged to take an active part in their own learning. Students do independent research as early as freshman year (and not just in the sciences). Your Mentor will actually create a personalized four year plan especially with and for you with your interests and passions in mind. If that means you want to do study abroad for a semester or a year (they have over 300 different programs to choose from), and an internship, or an independent study, or you want to create a startup, well, they will work with you.
Students at Eckerd are also required to do 40 hours of community service. But it’s not throwaway service or one offs like much service is. They focus on what they call “reflective service.” These are actual classes where you study a problem, create a solution, and carry it out. Think of it as entrepreneurial community service, or design thinking service. For students who are interested in working in the fields of public service, public health, or marine biology, this kind of service work is developing crucial skills.
All seniors at Eckerd will finish with a capstone project called Quest for Meaning. At the heart of this course is the concept of “Imagining Justice.” This inquiry based course invites you to explore questions like “what will make me truly happy?” or “who do I want to be?” or “what do I owe my community?” What’s very special about this is you will reunite with your freshman Autumn Term classmates to reflect on the journey you’ve taken in the previous three years. During this course, you will deepen your connections to what you have studied and learned, how you have grown personally, what your future will look like, and how you imagine justice will be.
What do people study at Eckerd? Well it’s a terrific liberal arts college, so you can do everything. But it’s also on the Gulf Coast of Florida, so Marine Sciences is where it’s at. Eckerd is known for how many of its students have won Hollings Scholarships (from NOAA) and they have ana amazing track record for their students getting into top grad schools in Marine Sciences. But Environmental Studies are also high quality, and Animal Sciences are also top notch. Geosciences is a strong program as are the Humanities. International Business, Business, and International Studies have also gained recognition. In a place with a 12:1 student faculty ratio, there isn’t much to frown on.
And what is there to do for fun? Remember that place you went to one break with the activities center where you could rent the kayak, or a paddleboard, or a sailboat? Guess what? You can do that with just an ID on the waterfront at Eckerd! Play beach volleyball, check out some gear to go camping, get certified to sail, go wake-boarding, waterskiing, fishing, or just kick back on South Beach and relax with your dog. At the end of the year, enjoy the Beach Bash and float on the water, slide down the water slides, cookout and hang out.
Did I mention the dorms allow pets? One of the traditions at Eckerd is a blessing of the pets, and they even have their own commencement! There are 14 residence halls that allow pets. And your pal can come as of day one, too! Pets including dogs, cats, ducks, chinchillas, rabbits, and ferrets are OK as long as they have the proper health and meet certain standards from their vets.
There’s no Greek life here at Eckerd. But that’s because the social life is a different vibe. People are up 24/7. They’re in the dorms, on the beach, and all over. Eckerd is a very relaxed kind of place. People take their learning seriously but they also take their fun seriously, as well. Eckerd is a DII school but they don’t have many sports. Club Sports and Intramurals are big. Beach volleyball is huge, men’s rugby, but also kickball, dodgeball, ultimate frisbee. The Kon Tiki Raft Race is a yearly tradition if you want to get competitive that way (make your own raft and race your competitors). And there are plenty of student organizations to join from arts and service groups, to environmentalism and vegetarianism, academic groups and social justice groups, to some unique to them like the surfing club, spearfishing, shark conservation, and skateboarding. There’s also a B.S. Ballet held yearly where students create a series of parodies of various Eckerd traditions to be performed for the school.
Is Eckerd for you? If your passion is Marine Science in a laid back atmosphere with very cool people where you can do a lot of challenging work in a personalized way and have the beach at your fingertips? Well then yeah. But if you want a traditional, ivy covered college with frats and sports, then no. This is not at all for you. This is a school that requires some independence. They’ll help you get it, but then they will expect you to have it. With great power comes great responsibility. If you don’t have that, you won’t do well here, as nurturing as it is.
Pros:
Cons:
But parents take heart! Eckerd is one of the 40 colleges that change lives. That means despite the waterfront views and pet friendly dorms, Eckerd is not for academic slackers. Faculty here are serious about developing students’ minds and making students into well rounded scholars. They help develop passions and interests while providing a supportive atmosphere where students can learn and grow. There are no advisors at Eckerd, only Mentors. And that distinction is one of the things that makes Eckerd the place it is.
This sense of mentorship and the importance of developing students over time goes back to Eckerd’s mission as a school. Eckerd’s charge is to change your life so that you can change the world. With small class sizes and Professor-Mentors to guide students, Eckerd provides an innovative liberal arts curriculum where students have multiple options for learning in multiple ways. Far from being an education that is about the acquisition of facts and figures, a modern liberal arts education is about preparing students for a rapidly changing and evolving world and work space. It’s about learning to use your creativity, your imagination, collaboration skills, communication skills, both verbal and written, analytic abilities, and interpersonal or “soft skills.”
Academically, Eckerd has an interesting approach to bringing students into the fold. Inventors of The Autumn Term, Eckerd doesn’t believe that a day or two, or even a week of orientation is enough to help freshmen make the transition to college. During the three week Autumn Term, you will take a one course seminar which is an introduction to college level thinking. Your seminar professor becomes your Mentor for your first year, and you will also get an upperclass-person as a peer mentor as well. Eckerd wants you to make the school your home and your center for learning but they don’t expect that you will come out of high school already knowing how to do everything they expect right away.
During your first year, you’ll take a class called Human Experience in which you will consider issues like justice, power, freedom, and global citizenship. In it you will read widely, write frequently, and use your communication skills with your peers and interact with speakers and writers. Students read a common texts and the authors of these texts will be there as part of the speaker series as well. These are big name people, Pulitzer Prize winners like Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique’s Journey, or Charles. M. Blow, author of Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Tracy Kidder, Dave Eggers, and Martha Craven Nussbaum have also been speakers in the last several years. This course is a firm grounding in the skills you need to be, not just successful in college, but successful people in the world.
This is just the beginning of the student centered model that Eckerd has in place. Professors offices are in high traffic areas: opening onto sidewalks, or in some cases the beach. Students are encouraged to take an active part in their own learning. Students do independent research as early as freshman year (and not just in the sciences). Your Mentor will actually create a personalized four year plan especially with and for you with your interests and passions in mind. If that means you want to do study abroad for a semester or a year (they have over 300 different programs to choose from), and an internship, or an independent study, or you want to create a startup, well, they will work with you.
Students at Eckerd are also required to do 40 hours of community service. But it’s not throwaway service or one offs like much service is. They focus on what they call “reflective service.” These are actual classes where you study a problem, create a solution, and carry it out. Think of it as entrepreneurial community service, or design thinking service. For students who are interested in working in the fields of public service, public health, or marine biology, this kind of service work is developing crucial skills.
All seniors at Eckerd will finish with a capstone project called Quest for Meaning. At the heart of this course is the concept of “Imagining Justice.” This inquiry based course invites you to explore questions like “what will make me truly happy?” or “who do I want to be?” or “what do I owe my community?” What’s very special about this is you will reunite with your freshman Autumn Term classmates to reflect on the journey you’ve taken in the previous three years. During this course, you will deepen your connections to what you have studied and learned, how you have grown personally, what your future will look like, and how you imagine justice will be.
What do people study at Eckerd? Well it’s a terrific liberal arts college, so you can do everything. But it’s also on the Gulf Coast of Florida, so Marine Sciences is where it’s at. Eckerd is known for how many of its students have won Hollings Scholarships (from NOAA) and they have ana amazing track record for their students getting into top grad schools in Marine Sciences. But Environmental Studies are also high quality, and Animal Sciences are also top notch. Geosciences is a strong program as are the Humanities. International Business, Business, and International Studies have also gained recognition. In a place with a 12:1 student faculty ratio, there isn’t much to frown on.
And what is there to do for fun? Remember that place you went to one break with the activities center where you could rent the kayak, or a paddleboard, or a sailboat? Guess what? You can do that with just an ID on the waterfront at Eckerd! Play beach volleyball, check out some gear to go camping, get certified to sail, go wake-boarding, waterskiing, fishing, or just kick back on South Beach and relax with your dog. At the end of the year, enjoy the Beach Bash and float on the water, slide down the water slides, cookout and hang out.
Did I mention the dorms allow pets? One of the traditions at Eckerd is a blessing of the pets, and they even have their own commencement! There are 14 residence halls that allow pets. And your pal can come as of day one, too! Pets including dogs, cats, ducks, chinchillas, rabbits, and ferrets are OK as long as they have the proper health and meet certain standards from their vets.
There’s no Greek life here at Eckerd. But that’s because the social life is a different vibe. People are up 24/7. They’re in the dorms, on the beach, and all over. Eckerd is a very relaxed kind of place. People take their learning seriously but they also take their fun seriously, as well. Eckerd is a DII school but they don’t have many sports. Club Sports and Intramurals are big. Beach volleyball is huge, men’s rugby, but also kickball, dodgeball, ultimate frisbee. The Kon Tiki Raft Race is a yearly tradition if you want to get competitive that way (make your own raft and race your competitors). And there are plenty of student organizations to join from arts and service groups, to environmentalism and vegetarianism, academic groups and social justice groups, to some unique to them like the surfing club, spearfishing, shark conservation, and skateboarding. There’s also a B.S. Ballet held yearly where students create a series of parodies of various Eckerd traditions to be performed for the school.
Is Eckerd for you? If your passion is Marine Science in a laid back atmosphere with very cool people where you can do a lot of challenging work in a personalized way and have the beach at your fingertips? Well then yeah. But if you want a traditional, ivy covered college with frats and sports, then no. This is not at all for you. This is a school that requires some independence. They’ll help you get it, but then they will expect you to have it. With great power comes great responsibility. If you don’t have that, you won’t do well here, as nurturing as it is.
Pros:
- Amazing weather. Every. Day.
- Terrific Marine Science
- Pet friendly
- Laid back people, independent spirit
Cons:
- Bad for people with allergies
- Hard work
- Requires independence and responsibility
- Not a traditional kind of school