Richter Scholar Program

The Richter Apprentice Scholars Program provides students, early in their academic careers, with the opportunity to conduct independent, individual research with Lake Forest College faculty. The ultimate goal is to foster, among the participating students, an especially strong commitment to the intellectual life, and to encourage them to consider careers in research and teaching.

Richter Seminar
Richter Scholars participate in an interdisciplinary first-year series of seminars, taught in the spring. Through readings, intensive discussions and student colloquia, the seminar explores multiple disciplines encompassed within a liberal arts and sciences education. Subjects range from ancient philosophy to contemporary genetics, and core texts highlight traditions, innovations and concepts from Gilgamesh and the Bible to modern cinema and quantum mechanics. Student participation fosters creative and independent thinking about fundamental questions, and critical reflection on methods of inquiry serves as an introduction to the collaborative research projects students engage in with faculty mentors during the summer.

Summer Research
In the summer after the freshman year, each student in the Richter Program is employed for a ten week period and works one-on-one with a faculty member, doing independent research in a particular field. As the Richter Apprentice Scholars live and work together and participate in a weekly colloquium, they become a community of peers that provides encouragement and support for each member's research endeavors. The result is a group of apprentice scholars motivated to continue their intellectual achievement in the future.



"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't."

 

 "There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe in everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking"