The Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities (ACTC) is a consortium of private liberal arts colleges in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis–Saint Paul) of Minnesota dedicated to providing cooperative programs, services, and opportunities for their respective students, faculty, staff, and administrators. The ACTC is located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The five members of the ACTC are:
A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences. Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum. Students in a liberal arts college generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional humanities subjects taught as liberal arts. Although it draws on European antecedents, the liberal arts college is strongly associated with American higher education, and most liberal arts colleges around the world draw explicitly on the American model.
Minneapolis–Saint Paul is a major metropolitan area built around the Mississippi, Minnesota and St. Croix rivers in east central Minnesota. The area is commonly known as the Twin Cities after its two largest cities, Minneapolis, the most populous city in the state, and Saint Paul, the state capital. It is an example of twin cities in the sense of geographical proximity. Minnesotans living outside of Minneapolis and Saint Paul often refer to the two together as "The Cities".
Minnesota is a state in the Upper Midwest and northern regions of the United States. Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. state on May 11, 1858, created from the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory. The state has a large number of lakes, and is known by the slogan the "Land of 10,000 Lakes". Its official motto is L'Étoile du Nord.
Augsburg University is a private liberal arts college in Minneapolis, Minnesota that is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Upon its founding in 1869, it was a Norwegian-American Lutheran seminary known as Augsburg Seminarium. Its first college class began in the fall of 1874. Today, the university enrolls approximately 3000 undergraduate students and 800 graduate students. The school is known for its emphasis on service learning; volunteering in the community is both an instructional strategy and a required part of a student's coursework. In 2010 Augsburg was one of the six higher education institutions to receive the Presidential Award for Community Service, sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service. On September 1, 2017 the name of the school changed from Augsburg College to Augsburg University.
Hamline University is a private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It was founded in 1854 and is known for its emphasis on experiential learning, service, and social justice. The university is named after Bishop Leonidas Lent Hamline of the United Methodist Church. Hamline was the first institution of higher learning in Minnesota and is one of five Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities. The university is composed of the College of Liberal Arts, School of Education, School of Business, and the Creative Writing Programs. Hamline is a community of 2,117 undergraduate students and 1,668 graduate students.
Macalester College is a private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Founded in 1874, Macalester is exclusively an undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 2,174 students in the fall of 2018 from 50 U.S. states, 4 U.S territories, the District of Columbia and 97 countries. It is currently a Forbes Top 100 College, and a Forbes Top 50 School for International Students. In 2018, U.S. News & World Report ranked Macalester as 26th best liberal arts college in the United States, 16th for undergraduate teaching at a national liberal arts college, and 21st for best value at a national liberal arts college.
The ACTC was officially incorporated in 1975 in order to share and enrich academic offerings for the students of the five institutions. The consortium continues to promote student exchange between its member campuses and to develop and share academic programs. The opportunity for cross-registration makes possible a range and depth of course offerings and majors unavailable at any single institution.
According to the ACTC's official website (see link below), "this partnership combines the benefits of our campuses' small, liberal arts atmospheres with the diverse opportunities of a large university. Students enrolled at one institution are able to experience the strengths and benefits of each school."
The College of Saint Benedict (CSB), a women's college, and Saint John's University (SJU), a men's college, are private liberal arts colleges respectively located in St. Joseph and Collegeville, Minnesota, United States, near St. Cloud. Under CSB's and SJU's coordinate relationship, students at the two colleges have a shared curriculum, and access to the resources of both campuses.
The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) is a college athletic conference which competes in NCAA Division III. All 13 of the member schools are located in Minnesota and are private institutions, with only two being non-sectarian.
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses are approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) apart, and the St. Paul campus is actually in neighboring Falcon Heights. It is the oldest and largest campus within the University of Minnesota system and has the sixth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 50,943 students in 2018-19. The university is the flagship institution of the University of Minnesota system, and is organized into 19 colleges and schools, with sister campuses in Crookston, Duluth, Morris, and Rochester.
The University of St. Thomas is a private, Roman Catholic, liberal arts, and archdiocesan university located in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1885 as a Catholic seminary, it is named after Thomas Aquinas, the medieval Catholic theologian and philosopher who is the patron saint of students. St. Thomas currently enrolls nearly 10,000 students, making it Minnesota's largest private, non-profit university. Julie Sullivan became its 15th president in 2013.
St. Catherine University is a private Catholic liberal arts university, located in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Established as one of the first institutions of higher learning specifically for women in the Midwest, the school was known as the College of St. Catherine until 2009. Today St. Kate's offers baccalaureate programs for women plus graduate and associate programs for women and men.
The Colleges of the Fenway is a collegiate consortium located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The association promotes collaboration among five (5) local colleges to enhance the variety of educational programs; to gain economics benefits through shared research, medical, and dining facilities; and to provide students, faculty, and staff with the opportunity to study, live, teach, and work in a small college environment while enjoying the resources of a major academic environment comparable to that of a large-scale university setting.
The College of Visual Arts (CVA) in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, was a private, accredited, four-year college of art and design offering a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in fine arts, graphic design, illustration, fashion design, and photography. The fine arts degree offered concentrations in drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture.
An affiliated school or affiliated college is an educational institution that operates independently, but also has a formal collaborative agreement with another, usually larger institution that may have some level of control or influence over its academic policies, standards or programs.
Thomas More University is a liberal arts university located in Crestview Hills, Kentucky, a suburb near Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States. The Roman Catholic school serves about 2,200 full and part-time students. The university was founded in 1921 by the local Benedictine Sisters as Villa Madonna College.
Saint Paul, Minnesota contains many educational institutions. A number of educational "firsts" have happened in Saint Paul. Hamline University, the first and oldest college in Minnesota, was founded in Saint Paul in 1854. In 1991 Minnesota became the first state in the United States to pass legislation allowing the existence of charter schools. The following year, the first charter school in the nation, City Academy High School, was established in Saint Paul. The oldest library in Minnesota, the Minnesota State Law Library, was opened in 1849.
The Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) is a consortium of 29 public colleges and universities in 27 states and one Canadian province. Established in 1987, COPLAC advances the aims of its member institutions and drives awareness of the value of public liberal arts education in a student-centered, residential environment.
Saint Paul, Minnesota is noted for its neighborhoods. The city has been called "fifteen small towns with one mayor", owing to the neighborhood-based life of much of the city. Saint Paul is partially governed by not 15 but 17 City Districts.
The Minnesota Public Interest Research Group describes itself as "a grassroots, non-partisan, nonprofit, student-directed organization that empowers and trains students and engages the community to take collective action in the public interest throughout the state of Minnesota."
St. Paul Preparatory School, formerly known as Nacel International School, is a private college preparatory school in St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S., and part of the Nacel International School System. Founded in 2003 by US-based student exchange organization Nacel Open Door, it recruits students from more than 50 countries worldwide including the United States. All international students are placed in host families who they live with for five or ten month periods while school is in session.
The Experimental College of the Twin Cities (EXCOtc) is an experimental college in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area that provides peer-based and free education to the wider community. It was started by Macalester students in the Spring of 2006 in response to a policy change that reflected the shrinking access to higher education nationally and the neo-liberal model in the US and around the world. EXCOtc is currently expanding to other college campuses and community groups, both of which can create their own EXCO chapters. A second chapter was created at the University of Minnesota in the winter of 2007, as a continuation of protests in support of a strike by the workers of the campus's AFSCME union who demanded a living wage. Protesting students believed that their school's administration had abandoned the principles of the public land-grant institution: equal access, social justice, democratic education. So, they decided to devote their energies to form a new chapter of EXCOtc, as a university that would enact those ideals.
The Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC) is a global association of colleges and universities supporting the use of classic texts and core curricula in undergraduate education. It is headquartered at Saint Mary's College of California. It is broadly associated with general education.