“Keene State College programs and faculty are providing me with the best preparation for my future career in Physics, which is highly competitive. I recently worked as an intern with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center – an opportunity which would not have been open to me without my education from the Keene State College Physics department. My experience at Keene State is everything that I hoped for, and will help me be successful in the future.”
– Nicole Mihalko 2012 , Physics
We care as much about how you learn as what you learn.
Our innovative academic programs and practices are designed to make teaching and learning lively and successful.
For incoming students, it’s important to know about the Integrative Studies Program (ISP), the four-credit course structure, and the college-wide Honors program.
Integrative Studies Program (ISP): All majors and careers draw on two basic skills: the ability to communicate clearly, and the ability to analyze data. All first-year KSC students take seminar courses in two areas –Thinking and Writing, and Quantitative Literacy. The ISP courses are structured around topics that typically cross boundaries between disciplines: The History of Jazz. Food, Health, and the Environment. Baseball Through the Years. The courses are designed to develop multilayered thinking skills – writing, reasoning, analysis – for an integrated approach to solving problems.
Keene State’s Integrative Studies Program has been named an “exemplar” program by the Association of American Colleges & Universities. In the three years since ISP has been implemented, the National Survey of Student Engagement has documented significant gains at KSC in student academic effort and in the College’s use of best practices to enhance learning.
Four-credit course structure: Because nearly every course at KSC carries four credits, students spend more time in fewer classes, creating a deeper connection with the course material. Students may take up to 20 credits per semester.
Honors program: Exceptional students may be asked to apply to the Honors program, which offers challenging and creative course selections, many enrichment activities, and includes a mandatory study-abroad component.
Keene State is not your grandmother’s teachers college.
We still graduate many teachers, all of whom have two majors – Education, and another specialization of their choice. But among our 40 majors we have some truly distinctive programs of study that would have dazzled the 27 young women in the school’s first class in 1909. Such as:
- Holocaust and Genocide Studies, B.A.
- Sustainable Product Design and Innovation, B.S.
- Architecture, B.S.
- Environmental Studies, B.S.
- Psychology, B.A.
- Geography, B.A.
- Film Studies, B.A.
- Health Promotion and Wellness, B.S.
- Theatre Arts, B.A.
