The faculty and administration of the College strongly believe that experiential education should be one of the most distinctive aspects of your career at Northeastern. The term "experiential" refers to traditional NU opportunities such as coop but also to academic internships, study abroad, community service, field work, research collaborations with faculty, artistic performance, and so forth. Each of these involves an important out-of-class, learn-by-doing approach to education, for making connections between work and course work, between living and learning. Though most students usually undertake one or more of these activities at some point before they graduate anyway, it is because such experiences are so valuable that they are part of your academic program as a graduation requirement. This guide is intended to explain the requirement and how you may take advantage of it on your path toward graduation.

Each of the departments in the College has an approach--sometimes with options--by which you can fully satisfy the requirement, and you should check with your major program to see which approach applies most in your case. In all cases, however, the learning that is achieved and evaluated as part of the relevant course work earns standard academic credit and is counted toward graduation.

We all know that everyone learns best when actively involved in their own learning, and this requirement asks that you take a very active role in your education in many ways. It first of all encourages your direct engagement in the subject matter and major being studied, whether it's archiving historical documents, conducting research at the European Community, interning at the State House, or volunteering at a shelter. It also provides a structured way of analyzing and building on the experiential activity, whether through journals, interviews, term papers, presentations, or other related assignments. Finally, you are asked to work closely with your instructors and advisors, who can help you plan your experiences most beneficially and then to interpret them academically and personally.

Intellectual concepts cannot be fully understood in a vacuum, but applied experiences are meaningless unless we really learn from them. It is with this philosophy in mind that the College is pleased to be supporting our students through the experiential education requirement itself and through the new Center for Experiential Education and Academic Advising (in One Meserve Hall), which is devoted to expanding the opportunities available to them. We hope, too, that this guide will be helpful to you in understanding the requirement and in planning or implementing your own experience.