Faculty-Student Collaboration

At Whittier, our student body works in close, active collaboration with professors who are leaders in their fields. Together, this team of learners conducts research projects that push the boundaries of knowledge and inquiry.

For example, select students support faculty members with their professional academic investigations - like the undergrads who assist Prof. Devin Iimoto’s biochemical analyses of snake venom, or those who help in Prof. Glenn Piner's study of quasars by analyzing images from the U.S. Naval Observatory. At other times, it is the faculty which assists the efforts of students in pursuing groundbreaking new research, as with the faculty advisors supervising Whittier Scholars projects. As a result of these experiences, and with confidence in their own abilities, Whittier students regularly go on to participate in conferences (such as the Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Research) and other academic conclaves across the nation.

Students interact further with faculty members in programs that take place at the Garrett, Johnson/Alumni, and Hartley Faculty Masters' Houses—on-campus residences where professors live for a multi-year term and coordinate and host an array of educational and social activities around a chosen theme, ranging from intimate dinners with guest artists or scholars, to professional mentoring or networking events, to off-campus cultural or sporting excursions, at-home game nights, and fireside chats. So, while students at large universities struggle merely to gain face-time with professors, here, students interact with the faculty personally and on a daily basis.