The Simmons PLAN Requirements
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 focus. 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 focuses on academic and career planning, further development of self-management skills, and developing competencies in diversity, equity, and inclusion. The course also prepares students to design their 3D cluster, and to engage in directed course planning in order to fulfill this requirement.
Year Three
3D–Design Across Diverse Disciplines
Years 3 and 4, 12 credits
Before spring registration of their second year, students will design and propose a cluster of three courses that address 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)
In the final segment of The Simmons Course, students finalize their 3D plans. The course also includes a focus on career and life planning, and students engage in a series of self-directed learning assignments designed to help them navigate their professional, financial, academic, and personal futures.
Year Four
The Capstone
Fall or Spring Semester
All students will take 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.)