The majority of courses at Sarah Lawrence are small seminars limited to 15 students. Most seminars are yearlong, although students may leave a seminar at the end of the first semester and join another for the second semester, if space is available. Seminars are offered in disciplines throughout the curriculum and have carefully designed plans of study. Each seminar student has a private meeting with the teacher every other week. (In First-Year Studies courses taken by all first-year students, each student meets individually with the teacher weekly.) In these meetings, known as conferences, student and teacher work together to define and explore what it is the student needs to know and what ways are most appropriate for acquiring this knowledge. In a literature class, for example, students may be reading Blake’s Songs of Innocence. In conference, a student excited by these poems may choose to read much more of Blake’s work and discuss, in a long paper or series of shorter papers, a common theme expressed in the poetry. Another student, new to poetry, may be better served by reading the work of several of Blake’s contemporaries or by undertaking a line-by-line analysis of a single long poem. The seminar/conference system at Sarah Lawrence makes it possible for students to study that which will prove most rewarding. These independent enterprises help each student develop and refine his or her skills of analysis, interpretation, and writing.

The combination of class and conference also encourages a greater understanding of the connections among different disciplines. A premed student in a philosophy class, for example, may choose to explore in conference the issue of medical ethics. Or a musician in an advanced calculus class may research the mathematical foundations of symphonic music. Recent conference projects have included “Contextualizing the Scopes Trial”; “Women’s Roles in Chekhov”; “Discrimination and the Death Penalty”; “Human Immune Response to Viral Infection”; “Property Acquisition and Interracial Marriage Among the Osage People in Oklahoma”; “Defining ‘Jewishness’ in an Age of Shifting Identities”; “The Impact of Poverty on Moral Development”; and “Melatonin, Circadian Rhythms, and Seasonal Affective Disorder.”

The seminar/conference format is used for all courses other than those in music, dance, and theatre. A variant of the seminar/conference system is used in visual arts courses, which include both the seminar and conference and optional components.