General-Studies

A School of General Studies student by day, Christina Clark straps on her pointe shoes by night to perform with New York City Ballet, one of the nation’s premier ballet companies.

The School of General Studies should not recruit or accept students from low-income backgrounds if it cannot financially accommodate them.

Jay-Z was met with a standing ovation upon entering The Forum on Columbia’s Manhattanville campus. While Beyoncé—yes, you read that right—slipped inconspicuously into her seat in the audience, Jay-Z sat down to speak on topics ranging from his musical influences to prison reform to his controversial partnership with the National Football League to his historic role in the landscape of hip-hop.

Columbia is the only Ivy League institution with an undergraduate school dedicated to fostering a community of “nontraditional” students from diverse backgrounds who have delayed their educational experience for a year or more. Named the School of General Studies, it promotes “experience and maturity” as prime features of the school’s community.

A select number of low-income students at the School of General Studies will now have access to subsidized meal plans, according to an email sent to students from the General Studies Office of Educational Financing.

Starting fall 2020, students entering the School of General Studies with under 30 credits will be required to take Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization if they have not already fulfilled their literature/humanities and social science requirements. According to administrators, the effort comes as part of a broader move to slowly integrate General Studies students into the Core Curriculum.

For Aaron Stout, GS ’21 and a veteran, Columbia offered a unique opportunity through the School of General Studies to integrate and interact with the larger undergraduate student body both socially and academically, something other universities often do not offer for students in continuing education programs.

As she sits across the table from a portrait of Lorenzo Da Ponte, the first professor of Italian at Columbia University, Barbara Faedda prepares to change the direction of the Italian department with her new seminar, Introduction to Fashion Studies.

An ornate image of bucolic gardens inhabited by lounging Turkish poets engaged in conversation took up the screen in Schermerhorn’s eighth floor lecture hall. Though seemingly purely decorative, these manuscript images told a story in reflecting the essential values of Ottoman life during the 16th century.

In lieu of a set and props, the horror of the scene is painted on Tecmessa’s face. Her husband, the warrior Ajax, is reeling from the death of his friend Achilles in the Trojan War. To add insult to injury, the army generals have passed him over for the honor of receiving Achilles’ armor. When his rage and grief drive him to despair, Ajax falls on his sword. After lamenting over his mangled body, Tecmessa turns to the audience, asking, “Who will lift him?” Her shift in focus is apt. The real play, after all, is in the audience.