CEP is a major that was built by and for the students. It is a major in leadership and group practice, where each student is expected to be an active participant not only in the classroom, but in the operation and development of the major. Students deliberate and make policy decisions through a consensus-based governance system.
Students pursue their own interests through the structure and flexibility of an Individualized Study Plan (ISP). Alongside core courses, students craft their curriculum in a way that supports their educational goals. In this way, CEP students bring their areas of interest back to the CEP community to create an interdisciplinary learning environment.
This major is an ongoing experiment in mutual learning, from initiation to implementation, from personal empowerment to enlightened service. While policies and curricula shift to reflect the lessons learned by past students, the spirit of the CEP program stays the same.
Our Mission
Community, Environment, and Planning is a self-directed, diverse undergraduate major comprised of students, faculty, and staff engaged in holistic growth and a collaborative process of experiential and interdisciplinary learning. In our major, we develop skills, techniques, and knowledge necessary to be active leaders and conscientious planners in our communities and environments.
Our Values
The learning environment must resemble and promote the situation that students will create as citizens, leaders, and workers. All members of CEP actively engage, participate, and form a strong community for the benefit of our members and our communities.
We are dedicated to the holistic growth of each individual member. We maintain academic challenge and rigor and reach beyond academia as necessary in an effort to educate the whole person. We emphasize personal, as well as collective growth, recognizing all growth as a process that is never complete.
We are a collective body of individuals each committed to making decisions with prudence, wisdom, and integrity. We are strongest when we make conscious choices and when we put co-creation in the place of passivity. We intend to influence the educational apparatus, even as it influences us.
Self-directed learning can best occur in the company of others who are similarly motivated. We are each other’s teachers through collaboration and the active participation of all members of the community. We view people on the basis of the equal dignity of each individual while embracing differences recognizing that they enrich our learning experience as a community.
CEP as a program and as individuals should care for the people and places around them through action and with a sense of stewardship. We hold ourselves responsible for our words and deeds in an effort to better our major, our communities, and ourselves.