Shimer College is a small, private, undergraduate liberal arts college
in Chicago. Founded by Frances Wood Shimer in 1853 in Mt. Carroll,
Illinois, it was a women's school for most of its first century. It
joined with the University of Chicago in 1896, and became one of the
first junior colleges in the country in 1907. In 1950, it became a
co-educational four-year college, took the name Shimer College, and
adopted the university's curriculum of the Hutchins Plan of Great Books
and Socratic seminars. In 1958, Shimer separated from the university
and enjoyed national recognition and strong growth in the 1960s but was
forced by financial problems to abandon its campus in 1978. It then
moved to Waukegan, IL, remaining there until 2006, when it moved to the
National Register of Historic Places-listed campus of the Illinois
Institute of Technology in the Bronzeville neighborhood in the Douglas
community area of Chicago. Classes are exclusively small seminars in
which students discuss original source material rather than textbooks.
The Early Entrant Program, in place since 1950, allows students who
have not yet completed high school to start college early. Shimer has
the highest rate of doctoral productivity of any liberal arts college
in the country.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimer_College>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
330:
The city of Byzantium was consecrated as Constantinople, the new
capital of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine the Great .
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople>
1813:
William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth departed
westward from Sydney on an expedition to become the first Europeans
confirmed to cross the Blue Mountains.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Mountains>
1880:
A land dispute between the Southern Pacific Railroad and settlers in
Hanford, California, turned deadly when a gun battle broke out, leaving
seven dead.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussel_Slough_Tragedy>
1946:
The United Malays National Organisation, today Malaysia's largest
political party, was founded, originally to oppose the constitutional
framework of the Malayan Union.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Malays_National_Organisation>
1997:
Deep Blue became the first computer to defeat a world chess champion,
when it bested Garry Kasparov in six games.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_%28chess_computer%29>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
bereft (adj):
Deprived, robbed (of something)
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bereft>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
--Richard Feynman
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman>