Pennsylvania College Road Trip: Bucknell
In high school, Tobias Cozzolino of Tewksbury, New Jersey, attended a presentation by Bucknell University's student-managed investment fund class in New York City. Hearing undergrads talk about managing a $1.7 million fund gave him a firsthand look at how the liberal arts college blends real-world learning into its curriculum.
By his junior year at Bucknell, Cozzolino was a presenter himself as a part of the class and on his way to earning a degree in accounting and financial management. "You not only get the book smarts, but you can put it into practice," the 2019 grad says.
[Read: What You Need to Know About Becoming a Finance and Financial Management Services Major.]
With 3,600 undergraduates, Bucknell "is a small big school," President John Bravman says.
The 450-acre campus in central Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River Valley is relatively compact, but students have loads of opportunities. For instance, by graduation, more than half of seniors have worked on research and 87% have completed an internship, student teaching placement or other option for hands-on experience.
By nine months after graduation, 96% of the class of 2018 reported they were employed, volunteering or in grad school -- or preparing for it.
Dabreon Darby, a 2019 geology and environmental studies and sciences grad from Buffalo, New York, worked with peers from several different disciplines to help a health care communications and marketing firm with research designed to improve specialty care for oncology patients. He welcomed "the opportunity to be involved in different things," he says, and he now works at the National Environmental Education Foundation in Washington, D.C.
[Read: How Colleges Help Students Gear Up for Jobs.]
Bucknell offers more than 60 majors across its three colleges of arts and sciences, management, and engineering. Arts and sciences students all take a team-taught Integrated Perspectives course, in which they might examine a topic like drug use and consequences or data science through an interdisciplinary lens.
About 15% of undergrads choose a major in the Freeman College of Management, which offers programs like business analytics and markets, innovation and design.
In the engineering school, students can choose from biomedical, civil, computer and environmental engineering, among others. Megan Grossman, a recent chemical engineering grad from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, enjoyed the liberal arts approach to engineering and "being able as a STEM major to branch out" by filling her schedule with economics and Spanish classes and minoring in both.
All freshmen take a foundation seminar with about 16 students in a topic that interests them, such as "Global Dress and Fashion Systems" or "Data, Power and Inequality." Several seminar topics correspond to a themed residential college -- Environmental College, for instance, or Society and Technology College -- and freshmen there live alongside their classmates.
"It's a good way to meet people right off the bat," says Julia Shapiro, a 2019 English grad from Holmdel, New Jersey, who lived in the Languages and Cultures College and took "Place, Identity, and Culture."
[Read: What to Ask About a College's First-Year Experience.]
More than 90% of undergrads live on campus, and Bucknell has a 9:1 student-faculty ratio. "That number comes to life here," says Cozzolino, who appreciated having a lot of one-on-one interaction with his professors in class and in the community.
More than half of sophomores through seniors join a fraternity or sorority. Greek life has a big presence, undergrads say, but there are not major boundaries between those who join and those who don't. There are also more than 150 other campus organizations.
"I was able to put my hands in a lot of different pots," says Alexander M. Jordan, a 2019 political science and sociology grad from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, who worked at the campus radio station and in the athletics and recreation office.
Historic downtown Lewisburg -- home to about 5,800 people and a mix of shops, cafes, an art gallery and an art deco movie house -- is about a 10-minute walk from campus. The surrounding area brings ample opportunity for hiking, caving, stargazing and kayaking.
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