Prescott College is a small, private, liberal arts college nestled in the pine-covered mountains of central Arizona. Founded in 1966 with a grant from the Ford Foundation, the College is committed to engaging students in a rigorous, well rounded liberal arts education centered on scholarship, innovative teaching methods, and close relationships between students and faculty. In keeping with the College’s mission, students are encouraged to think critically and act ethically with sensitivity to both the human community and the biosphere and to live productive lives of self-fulfillment and service to others.

Small class size, a field-based curriculum, and real-life experiences distinguish Prescott College as a leader in undergraduate education. The faculty-student interaction at Prescott is very different from more extensively classroom-based programs and allows ample opportunities for participating, debating, and interacting one-on-one with faculty who serve as role models and mentors and often become life-long friends and colleagues. At Prescott College faculty and students travel and study and research and write and work more closely together than at any other college.

At Prescott College a wide variety of majors/emphases are supported through six multi-disciplinary programs that collectively explore what are traditionally considered separate fields of inquiry. Students design the direction and the methodology of their overall degree program in close collaboration with advisors, frequently combining coursework from one or more areas to create unique courses of study.

Prescott College is an “experiential education” school. Students learn by doing, going, seeing, hearing, tasting, experimenting, working, thinking, reflecting, and touching as much as they learn from reading and lectures. Many courses have strong field components, and some are conducted entirely in the field, going on-site throughout the Southwest, Mexico, Africa, Europe, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and throughout the world. With this approach every class moves along at warp speed, and students are expected to keep up with the academic side of their assignments as they travel, camp, relocate, mesh with local communities, conduct field studies, and otherwise pursue the “experiential” side of their education.

Internships, apprenticeships, independent studies, community service, and study abroad are encouraged so that students may study and live in cultural contexts outside their normal experience. Because of this Prescott College students are much more prepared for careers in their fields, as well as for life in general, than mainstream college students.

Prescott grads have advanced to graduate study and have also gone on to thrive as educators, ecologists, conservationists, field biologists, botanists, public policy consultants, social workers, authors, outdoor guides, kayak instructors, emergency medical technicians, financial consultants, recording engineers, journalists, poets, psychologists, and activists, to name just a few examples.