PLAN Requirements for On-the-Ground Students
Year One
The Boston Course
Fall Semester, 4 credits
In this writing-intensive first year seminar, students will engage with the City of Boston. Based on faculty passions and expertise, these courses run the gamut of disciplinary themes. They share a focus on the development of writing skills, information literacy, and critical analysis.
The Simmons Course: Explore
Fall Semester, 2 credits
This course supports Simmons students in their transition to college. The primary goals of the course are to introduce students to Simmons, to navigating cultural differences, to self-management, and to what it means to engage with your community.
The Leadership Course
Spring Semester, 4 credits
This course challenges students to think about themselves as leaders from a leadership model based on engaging others in the quest for positive social outcomes. This course will include skill development in building relationships across differences; communicating a compelling narrative in writing and public speaking; ethical decision making; speaking up in the face of injustice; and creating team leadership and followership.
Year Two
The Learning Community
Fall or Spring Semester, 8 credits
The Learning Community will provide students with an opportunity to understand a topic from multiple disciplinary perspectives. This approach to integrative learning will allow students to grasp the habits of mind and intellectual methods of two disciplines (via two 3-credit courses) and how they may be brought to bear on a topic, issue, or problem (via a 2-credit integrative seminar jointly taught by the two course instructors).
The Simmons Course: Experience
Fall or Spring Semester, 1 credit
The second year Simmons Course: Experience will focus on academic, co-curricular and career planning and further development of self-management skills. The course will also prepare you to fulfill your 3D graduation requirement.
Year Three
3D (Design Across Diverse Disciplines)
Years 1-4, 12 credits
Before spring registration of their second year, students will design and propose a cluster of three courses they have taken and plan to take that addresses a topic, problem, or issue from various disciplinary perspectives. Students will explain the rationale for their selection of these courses, focusing on the intellectual coherence of the courses they have chosen.
The Simmons Course: Excel
Fall or Spring Semester, 1 credit (online)
The Simmons Course Excel focuses on academic, career, and life planning. It represents a culmination of a three-course sequence that foregrounds the concepts of self-directed learning. The course also focuses on the development of competencies in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the refinement of self-management skills.
Year Four
The Capstone
Fall or Spring Semester
All students will complete a Capstone experience in their major, which will be designed by individual departments. Regardless of discipline, Capstone experiences will address career and graduate school preparation. (One Capstone in a student’s major is required to fulfill PLAN requirements; students with multiple majors may be required to fulfill Capstones in each major, depending on major requirements.)