Who Attends Conway? Who Teaches at Conway?

Conway attracts highly motivated, self-directed learners who want to pursue ecological planning and design careers and who learn best in an intensive and applied program. Conway students have a strong commitment to social and environmental issues.

Students come from diverse backgrounds and encompass a wide range of ages. Each class’s diversity of experience and perspective makes for a rich learning community.

Some students already have considerable life experience and/or graduate degrees in various fields. Others are more recently out of college and have already demonstrated a deep commitment to ecological design. Undergraduate fields commonly represented among our students include:

Our graduate degree is attractive to practicing architects, planners, and engineers who want to design more sensitively with the land. These professionals will be able to return to their industry after Conway having gained a whole-systems and ecological approach to design.

There are no part-time students at Conway and those who attend must be able to immerse themselves fully for ten months. There are occasional professional development opportunities, such as workshops in digital design.

2%

5% 6.3%

15% 10%

40%

21.3%

Environmental, Biological, and Geo Sciences

Social Sciences

Art + Design

Humanities

Planning and Geography

Engineering

Other

FOREIGN STUDENTS ARE WELCOME

We encourage foreign students to apply. There is no special application for such applicants; the standard admission procedure is followed, except that TOEFL scores may be required. Our program emphasizes communication as well as technical studies, and requires frequent public speaking and extensive writing in fluent, idiomatic English. In general, we consider the writing and public speaking demands too rigorous for students who are not fluent in English. We hire teachers whose integrity allows them to speak from their hearts and out of their lives, rather than simply from a textbook or solely on a theoretical basis. We value—and debate—theory, but value it most as it has relevance in practice.

Faculty positions have various functions. Core faculty are the glue and continuity of the program. At least one of them is with the students every day and for some sessions, such as Wednesday afternoon presentations, there are two to four faculty members present. These faculty carefully monitor the progress of individual students and coach them. As each term proceeds they are also constantly gauging where the class is as a whole and make adjustments to the timing of the subjects being presented.

WEEKLY GUEST SPEAKERS

Weekly visitors are also key contributors to the education at Conway. They conduct workshops, give talks, advise on projects, and interact in other ways. They typically have very targeted knowledge (such as how septic systems work or how forests may change over time) or a depth of design experience (such as in permaculture or conservation planning).

Our teachers are more likely to ask questions than to give answers. This doesn’t mean you can’t get a straight answer out of them, just that they think it is better to encourage thoughtfulness than to impose a solution from another place and time.

STUDENTS ARE TEACHERS

In a very real sense our students are teachers too. Students exchange ideas constantly. Between life experience and education, all have significant things to share. In recognition that students are important educators at Conway, they help award diplomas at graduation, with each student presenting another student with a diploma and offering words of appreciation for that fellow student.