September 12, 2017

U.S. News Recognizes Lewis & Clark’s Strengths in Overseas Study and Undergraduate Teaching

The new 2018 U.S News & World Report Best Colleges rankings identify Lewis & Clark’s Overseas and Off-Campus Programs as among the best in the nation. The peer rankings also feature Lewis & Clark on the “Best Undergraduate Teaching” list, a select group of 30 liberal arts colleges where the faculty has an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching.

For the fifth time in six years, according to the 2018 U.S News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, peer colleges and universities have identified Lewis & Clark’s Overseas and Off-Campus Programs as among the best in the nation. The rankings also feature Lewis & Clark on the “Best Undergraduate Teaching” list, a select group of 30 national liberal arts colleges where the faculty has an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching.

“Lewis & Clark has exemplary faculty and staff. Anyone who comes to campus can see our dedication, every day, in how we work with our students. I’m thrilled for this national recognition and I congratulate all my colleagues on these accolades,” said Bruce Suttmeier, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and associate professor of Japanese. “This is a special place, and for students looking to get the most out of their undergraduate education, these rankings affirm the high caliber of teaching, collaborative research, and global experiential learning that Lewis & Clark offers.”

The key criterion for consideration, as the magazine puts it, is that a college’s programs “involve substantial academic work and considerable interaction between the student and the culture.”

The only school in the Pacific Northwest to make the overseas program list, Lewis & Clark sends more than 60 percent of its students to programs in more than 30 countries, the majority of those programs in nations outside Western Europe. From Morocco to Ireland to Japan, Lewis & Clark’s international and off-campus academic programs help students prepare for and plan their next steps, whether those are overseas opportunities like Peace Corps or Fulbright fellowships, graduate school, or entering a job market where global experience is a competitive advantage.

The addition of Lewis & Clark to the “Best Undergraduate Teaching” group marks another milestone in the college’s continuing commitment to excellence in undergraduate teaching. Lewis & Clark is one of only four liberal arts colleges on the West Coast to make this list, and a recent $705,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is providing resources to implement a new Teaching Excellence Program in order to create collaborations among faculty and to support them in refining and sharing teaching practices with their colleagues.

Overseas and Off-Campus Programs

Teaching Excellence Program

Admissions