Structured Liberal Education (Stanford University)

Structured Liberal Education (SLE) (pronounced "slee") is a program at Stanford University offering an alternative three-course sequence for freshmen to fulfill their Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) and Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) requirements. With a year-long schedule of nine units in the fall and winter quarters, and ten in the spring quarter, SLE is unique in its intellectual rigor, multi-disciplinary approach, and residence-based structure.

History

Structured Liberal Education was the brainchild of Stanford history professor Mark Mancall, with political theorist Hannah Arendt as one of the original proponents of the program's enactment. In some respects, Stanford's SLE is comparable to other notable "Great Books" programs, such as Directed Studies at Yale University, the Liberal Arts Seminar at Georgetown University, the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Core Curriculum at Columbia University, the Core Curriculum at the University of Chicago, the Foundation Year Programme at the University of King's College, and the curriculum at St. John's College, but owing to Mancall's scholarly interests in East Asia, SLE's reading list is more culturally diverse.

Structure

All SLE participants live, dine, and attend class in the same residence hall, Florence Moore. Most recently, they live in either the all-freshman dorm, Alondra, which is made up of half SLE students and half IHUM students, or in one of the two four-class dorms, Cardenal and Faisan. Many of the upperclassmen in Cardenal and Faisan are former SLE students, which helps maintain an SLE community spanning the different years. In the main lounge of Florence Moore, known as the SLE lounge, students attend lectures given by professors within many departments at Stanford and by visiting guest lecturers. In addition, students participate in small-group sections, in which they discuss the lectures and assigned literature from SLE's extensive, diverse, and ever-evolving reading list. Films, often relating to the material of study, are screened weekly, and student-produced plays are regularly part of the syllabus. Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" is traditionally performed in the fall. SLE also provides freshman with intensive individual writing tutorials.

Administration

SLE is now under the auspices of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, which provides intellectual and academic support and is the base of many of the faculty who participate in the program. The administrative home of SLE is the IHUM Program.

Program Directors

• Mark Mancall - 1973--2007 - Professor of Modern History^[1]
• Roland Greene - 2007--2008 - Professor of English and Comparative Literature
• Carolyn Lougee Chappell - 2008--present - Professor of Early Modern European History^[2]

References

External links

• Official SLE Website
• Article on SLE culture in Stanford Magazine
• Article in The Stanford Daily touching on the implications of the SLE "nerd" stereotype
• Editorial in The Harvard Crimson imploring Harvard to create a "Great Books" program similar to Stanford's SLE and Yale's Directed Studies programs
• Taiwanese academic journal article describing SLE and citing it as an exemplary American model of how to promote residence-based academic learning
• Berlin's European College of Liberal Arts announcement of Structured Liberal Education, an international summer university emulating Stanford's program
• A SLE Inspired Reading List for Children