The Stanford Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program encourages students to live lives of ideas in an atmosphere that emphasizes critical thinking and tolerance for ambiguity.
SLE asks students to confront central questions that have perplexed and confounded humankind throughout the ages: What is knowledge? What is the relationship between reason and passion? How does the concept of justice change over time? Is coherent meaning possible in the modern era? Can we live spiritual lives in the contemporary world? These questions and many more provide the foundation for a chronologically structured course beginning in the ancient world and ending with the modern period.
SLE is academically rigorous, yet it also fosters close student-instructor relationships and provides an environment that encourages students to develop lasting friendships. Together with other students, SLE freshmen live and learn together in three houses (one freshman and two four-class) in one residence hall. This is the informal setting for lectures, small-group discussions, films and plays.
The SLE community promotes the active and often fierce exchange of ideas. This occurs not only in the classroom, but also in the dining room at mealtime and in the dorm late at night. SLE instructors participate actively in the intellectual life of the dorm, regularly dining with students and holding individual writing tutorials. Each week culminates with a film, a visual text that serves as a commentary on the written texts studied in lectures and discussion sections.
Each quarter students organize and produce a play that’s great fun for players and audience alike. This offers an additional lens for viewing the period under study. Students also receive individualized writing instruction from SLE instructors and upper-class writing tutors.
Click here to find out more information on the SLE fellowship.