Sixth College

About Sixth CollegeSixth College Students

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Sixth College: Preparing effective citizens for the 21st century

The College Theme

  • Sixth College prepares students to become effective global citizens who engage creatively and ethically with the complex issues facing the world in the 21st century.
  • Through the college's academic and co-curricular programs, students learn to become innovative, interconnected, and aware.
  • The college draws its creative inspiration from the interdisciplinary examination of culture, art and technology.

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Core Academic Program

The year-long Culture, Art and Technology (CAT) core sequence:

  • Explores how people in various societies use culture, especially in the forms of art and technology, both to express their beings and to shape and mediate their relationships and interactions with nature, with each other, and with their own built environment
  • Examines the functions of art and technology in different time periods, as well as the interactions and overlaps between art and technology, from a cross-cultural perspective
  • Teaches inquiry and discovery through the processes of writing, communicating, and composing in other media
  • Develops skills vital to working collaboratively, in teams, and across cultures

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The Practicum

Building bridges to local and global communities, engaging students in communal work, and fostering an ethical obligation to service

The upper-division Practicum project:

  • Challenges students to connect their academic education to surrounding communities locally, nationally, or globally
  • Promotes civic engagement and global consciousness
  • Engages students in the creative process of a research university
  • Provides students with the opportunity to reflect upon the relationship between their service and education

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Academic Advising

Assisting students in achieving their educational, career, and life goals

Your advisor:

  • Meets with you to learn about your academic, social, and personal experiences and needs
  • Assists you to feel a part of the academic community, develop sound academic and career goals, and ultimately be a successful and life-long learner
  • Interacts with administrators, faculty, and staff, helping them further understand your academic and personal development needs

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Student Affairs and Residential Life

Enriching the student experience through programs and services provided in partnership with students, faculty, and staff

Sixth College Student Affairs partners with Sixth College students:

  • to provide opportunities for involvement and leadership
  • to prepare students to become effective leaders for the 21st century
  • to help students build a college community that supports:
    • Individual creativity and expression
    • Students' understanding and appreciation of human differences
    • A positive learning environment for each member of the Sixth College community

The Residential Life program:

  • Provides a home-away-from-home for students with a variety of educational and social programs to help students connect to the campus community.

Student Affairs and Residential Life staff provide the following programs and services:

  • Leadership and other involvement activities (e.g. Sixth College Student Council, Resident Advisors)
  • Community building programs that reflect the college's identity and Culture, Art, and Technology academic theme
  • An educationally deliberate Residential Life program
  • Programming and services for commuter and transfer students
  • Opportunities for students to interact with professional artists through the Arts6 program
  • Personal counseling and crisis management services

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Sixth College history

In 2000, the Sixth College Faculty Steering Committee was charged to develop a detailed academic plan based on the theme Culture, Art and Technology. In September of 2002, Sixth College welcomed 275 students as members of its inaugural class. The theme sought to:

  • Address the relationship between art and technology and their impact on culture and society
  • Provide the intellectual stimulus for creating an educational environment that prepares students to become effective citizens of the 21st century, that is to say, students who are innovative, interconnected and aware.

The college's 3-part theme was a response to research calling for:

  • An interdisciplinary approach to education &#8211 the need for graduates to be generalists as well as specialists
  • The need for experiential education: Community engagement that integrates hands-on involvement and academic content
  • The need for enhanced communication skills, in various forms of media and across cultures
  • The need for teamwork skills and digital literacy: Together with Calit2, Sixth College was named part of the educational component in the Instructional Technology thrust of the campus proposal under the Governor's Research Initiative. Sixth College pioneers the teaching and learning of digital literacy at the undergraduate level and represents the educational "learning lab" of Calit2.

Sixth College has developed many exciting partnerships, providing students with numerous opportunities for professional engagement, as well as opportunities to graduate with the key 21st century skills: being innovative, interconnected and aware.

  • The Practicum , the college's service-learning component, has partnered with Teams in Engineering Service (TIES) a Jacobs School of Engineering program that provides engineering solutions to local non-profit organizations through diverse teams of undergraduates.
  • The college has also partnered with the University Events Office's ArtPower! program that gives students opportunities to engage with diverse, world-renowned artists.
  • Pacific Rim Undergraduate Experiences (PRIME), launched in 2004 with support from the National Science Foundation, lets students participate in international research and cultural experiences that will prepare them for the global workplace of the 21st century.

Through such partnerships, Sixth College students see community and social applications for their future professions.

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Looking forward

Sixth College continues to develop a community in which living and learning are overlapping experiences through a dedicated Student Affairs and Residential Life Program and continued partnerships on- and off- campus.

Sixth College has been working with Physical Planning to be part of a future University Center/ Sixth College Neighborhood that will guide development of the core of the UCSD campus. The campus neighborhood will be analogous to a city downtown - a central place of day and nighttime activity that will also include an Art Street.

Sixth College, through on- and off-campus partnerships, is striving to create a rich and varied cultural and social life for students as well as a more energized physical environment.

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