At Allegheny, professors embrace your unusual combinations of interests and talents. In fact, it’s one of the few schools that require students to major in one academic area and pursue at least one minor in a different area. This major+minor distinction, coupled with guaranteed research opportunities, results in developing the career and life skills most prized by employers and graduate schools.
The connection Allegheny students have with faculty is a hallmark of the Allegheny experience. The College has a rich legacy of faculty who go above and beyond in their interactions with students, serving as teachers, mentors, facilitators, career connectors, and more. And the College is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as #16 in the country for Best Undergraduate Teaching.
Students often mention unique academic experiences outside of the classroom, experiences that allow them to collaborate with prominent civic leaders, conduct real-life data analysis with someone in another country, or get their hands dirty in a local stream. Additionally, faculty work behind the scenes, often in partnership with others, to build a more inclusive academic experience, whether it is by removing barriers for underrepresented students or producing open-access texts. This work demonstrates Allegheny’s commitment to a liberal arts education and commitment to extraordinary outcomes for its graduates.
Everywhere you look on campus, you can find examples of faculty excellence in action.
Paula Burleigh, Ph.D., assistant professor of art history, co-director of the public humanities program, and affiliated faculty of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, led a faculty/student collaborative research project in summer 2023. She worked with three students who conducted a research project on public art and a feasibility study for a future public art stewardship program.
In 2024, Casey Bradshaw-Wilson, PhD., associate professor of environmental science & sustainability and co-director of the Watershed Conservation Research Center, connected her ESS Junior Seminar classes with Zach Norwood, planning director of the Crawford County Planning Commission. As part of the project, students helped to create the infrastructure and greenspace along a new multipurpose trail being constructed in Meadville. This included identifying plants and wildflower mixes to use and locations to plan them. The students also recommended educational signage, animal boxes, a potential outdoor exercise park, and ideas for how to connect the trail to other places in Meadville.
Amelia Finaret, Ph.D., associate professor of global health and economics, delivers academic excellence by way of her Food Economics: Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health course. She says, “Allegheny students — and students everywhere in the world, really — care a lot about the food system. They come from many different disciplinary backgrounds and with interests such as public health, environmental science, psychology, biology, nutrition, and agronomy. Studying food economics allows them to engage in solving global problems and leveraging their existing knowledge and interests to do so.”
In 2021 and 2022, Allegheny, led by a team of faculty in the natural sciences and mathematics, secured a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence grant, which advances the discovery and sharing of scientific knowledge for all.
According to Tim Chapp, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry and grant project director, after graduation, students who go into STEM fields will be in situations where they’re solving problems on a daily basis, and solutions to those problems do not fit solely within disciplinary boxes. This is where a strong liberal arts education becomes essential, instilling the ability to think broadly and draw on concepts and ideas from multiple disciplines.
In the summer of 2024, Caroline Maye ’26, a political science major with a history minor, and Jess Bickart ’26, a political science major and community and justice studies minor, worked on interpreting a major survey conducted by Professor of Political Science Shannan Mattiace, Ph.D. and Guillermo Trejo at the University of Notre Dame, with a team, about rural peoples’ trust in the regular police versus the community police systems.
The students took stock of the data and presented preliminary interpretations, with Maye’s skills in regression and statistical analysis proving to be critical in analyzing the data. The students’ work will be included in a book Mattiace is writing with Trejo, tentatively titled “Indigenous Resistance to Narco Violence.”
These are just a few examples of academic excellence and the path to extraordinary outcomes, delivered by a liberal arts education at Allegheny. Faculty, alumni, and students work together to ask questions, find answers, and make an impact on the community around them. At the end of students’ four-year journey, Allegheny faculty have prepared its graduates to enter the world with a fully rounded liberal arts perspective as problem-solvers, creative thinkers, and disciplined workers.