Kentucky Wesleyan
College
Office of Admission
3000 Frederica Street
Owensboro, KY 42302-1039
270-852-3120
800-999-0592
admitme@kwc.edu
COSTS:
Tuition:
$17,160
Room and Board:
$7,450
Fees, books, misc.:
$350
Kentucky
Wesleyan College
Owensboro, Kentucky
College Description
Affiliated with the United Methodist Church,
Kentucky Wesleyan College (KWC) stands among the foremost career-oriented
liberal arts colleges in the Southeast. As a four-year residential college,
Kentucky Wesleyan seeks students who show maturity, academic promise,
and leadership potential. Students' learning is guided and their lives
are shaped by faculty and staff members who are totally dedicated to undergraduate
teaching and the success of each student. Learning takes place in an environment
that affirms values of caring, integrity, honesty, respect, and hard work
and encourages intellectual, physical, and spiritual development. The
faculty and staff members proactively encourage learning outside the traditional
classroom through leadership, travel, the arts, athletics, and community
service.
Kentucky Wesleyan offers Leadership KWC, a nationally recognized program that utilizes liberal arts course work as its basis. Leadership KWC represents the College's belief that a solid liberal arts education provides the communication, problem-solving, and creative-thinking skills necessary for tomorrow's leaders. To specifically explore leadership, students may enroll in courses with special leadership emphasis, such as Profiles in Leadership, Women in Leadership, or the Psychology of Leadership. Students put leadership theory into practice through internships, community service, and workshops such as the College's sailing program. Students may choose to participate in Leadership XXI, a more extensive cocurricular leadership program that involves leadership courses, community service, leadership workshops, campus activity participation, and a senior thesis or project. Students who successfully complete Leadership XXI receive a leadership citation at graduation.
Kentucky Wesleyan is home to approximately 650 students from twenty-one states and several other countries. There are one women's, one men's, and two coed residence halls. Each residence hall room is air conditioned and has a cable television hookup and access to the campus computer network.
Kentucky Wesleyan College is located on 70 beautiful acres in Owensboro, Kentucky's third-largest city. Owensboro is located on the southern bank of the Ohio River, and the College is in a safe, residential neighborhood. The College is 45 minutes east of Evansville, Indiana; 2 hours north of Nashville, Tennessee; 2 hours west of Louisville, Kentucky; 4 hours west of Cincinnati, Ohio; and 4 hours east of St. Louis, Missouri.
A growing community of nearly 60,000 people, Owensboro is the cultural and industrial center of western Kentucky. Owensboro provides students with many opportunities for part-time employment and internships as well as easy access to museums, parks, shopping facilities, theaters, and an excellent symphony orchestra. There are opportunities for outdoor activities such as fishing, hiking, cycling, and waterskiing.
Kentucky Wesleyan and the Owensboro community share a
warm relationship. Many students are employed by local businesses, and
some remain in Owensboro after graduation. In addition, many local businesses
and shops offer discounts on goods and services to students.
Academic Life
There are three academic divisions in the KWC
curriculum: Natural Sciences, Humanities and Fine Arts, and Social Sciences.
Requirements for the degrees of Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts
are based on the principle of a broad distribution of studies among the
representative fields of human culture and a concentration of studies
in a specific field. In most cases, 128 semester hours are required to
obtain a bachelor's degree.
Students have the opportunity to develop and carry out individual programs of study related to their particular vocational or professional goals through the Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) program. By combining courses from two or more departments, the IDS student works toward a specifically tailored area of concentration.
Kentucky Wesleyan has 76 faculty members (39 full-time, 37 part-time). Eighty-nine percent of the faculty members have the doctorate or terminal degree in their fields. The faculty members at KWC combine scholarship and teaching ability with a genuine concern for students. Students' learning is guided and their lives are shaped by faculty members who are totally dedicated to undergraduate teaching and the success of each student. A student-faculty ratio of 13:1 and small class size (15–25 students) ensures that students and faculty members develop the rapport that is crucial to an effective learning environment. All faculty members teach and advise students; there are no graduate teaching assistants.
Kentucky Wesleyan operates on a semester calendar, with classes from late August to mid-December and from mid-January to early May. An interim May term (Maymester) is offered, as is a limited summer term from early June to early July. Credit and/or advanced placement is offered through CLEP, Advanced Placement courses, and the International Baccalaureate program.
Majors Offered:
Kentucky Wesleyan College offers the Bachelor
of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees, with more than thirty majors,
including accounting, art, art education, biology, business administration,
chemistry, communication arts, computer information systems, criminal
justice, education (elementary, middle grades, and secondary), English,
fine arts (art, theater, and music), fitness and sports management, history,
human services administration, journalism, mathematics, medical technology,
physical science, psychology, religion and philosophy, sociology, and
Spanish. Preprofessional programs are offered in Christian ministries,
dentistry, engineering, environmental science, law, medicine, optometry,
pharmacy, physical therapy, physician's assistant studies, and veterinary
medicine.
Off-Campus, Study-Abroad:
Students have the opportunity to learn outside
of the traditional classroom through a variety of off-campus study programs.
Students may arrange to study overseas on an individual basis for a summer,
a semester, or a year. During spring break, students may choose to study
business institutions, take urban studies, or observe plays and playwrights
in New York City for credit. An in-depth study of marine biology in Belize
is also offered each year during spring break. Other coordinated trips
have included travel to Estonia, Israel, London, Mexico, and France.
Campus Life
There are more than forty campus organizations,
including two national sororities, three national fraternities, several
campus ministries, the Panogram (newspaper), the Porphyrian (yearbook),
a 5,000-watt student-programmed FM radio station (WKWC 90.3 FM), the Kentucky
Wesleyan Singers, and the Wesleyan Players.
Students elect at-large members and officers on an annual basis to represent the student body in all areas of College life. The president of the Student Government Association also serves as an ex-officio member of the College's board of trustees. All policy and disciplinary issues are reviewed by the Dean of Student Life and by elected members of the Student Judiciary Board. The student handbook contains established guidelines for student life on campus.
Facilities and Resources
Academic facilities at Kentucky Wesleyan include
the Library Learning Center, the new Center for Business Studies, the
Ralph Center for Fine Arts, the PLUS Center, facilities for the FM radio
station, the KWC Playhouse (theater), and extensive natural science laboratories.
The Library Learning Center houses more than 150,000 books, periodicals, government documents, and audiovisual materials. Online databases and other electronic resources are also available. The library houses two computer labs for student use. In addition, a campuswide computer network links all campus facilities. This Ethernet network supports Windows-based PCs and provides access to e-mail, the Internet, the campus intranet, and several popular office suite programs. Each residence hall room is equipped with two network connections.
The Center for Business Studies is equipped with new facilities and furnishings. The most up-to-date audiovisual equipment is readily available in each classroom, and computers in the center have Pentium 4 processors and individual student hard drives. There is a wireless thirty-laptop-unit cart system that is portable to any classroom, and videoconferencing is available for student and faculty member use.
The Ralph Center for Fine Arts centrally houses all facets of the arts on campus. The multipurpose facility houses the campus radio station, a small performance hall, classroom and office space, studio space for art students, and practice rooms for student use. There is also an art gallery for display of student artwork.
Natural science laboratory equipment includes a purge
and trap gas chromatography system, a Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer,
an atomic absorption spectrometer, a high-performance liquid chromatography
system, and an ultraviolet/visible spectra photometer. Biology equipment
includes an environmental chamber, a laminar-flow hood, a dual-viewing
epifluorescence microscope, an inverted phase-contrast microscope, and
an ultramicroscope and transmission electron microscope.
Sports/ Varsity
Athletics
Kentucky Wesleyan participates in the NCAA's Division
II and the Great Lakes Valley Conference, offering baseball, basketball,
football, golf, and soccer for men and basketball, golf, soccer, softball,
tennis, and volleyball for women. The men's basketball program is one
of the top programs in the nation. With eight national championships,
Kentucky Wesleyan is the only school in NCAA Division II history to win
national championships in each of the past five decades. The College also
leads the nation with ninety-one NCAA Division II tournament wins and
twenty NCAA regional championships. In addition, KWC is the all-time leader
in NCAA Division II wins, with 1,347 games won.
The College also supports an intramural athletics program.
Financial Aid / Scholarships
Kentucky Wesleyan participates in all federal student
aid programs and is committed to helping each student meet his or her
demonstrated need. No student should hesitate to apply for admission due
to financial reasons. Kentucky Wesleyan awards more than $6.2 million
each year in financial aid to eligible students. Kentucky residents may
also qualify for Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority Grants.
In addition to federal and state financial aid programs, KWC invests more than $2.7 million annually in scholarships and grants for its students. Academic scholarships range from $2000 to full tuition and are renewable annually. Students who demonstrate a strong record of leadership in their school, church, place of employment, or community may be eligible for Stanley Reed Leadership Awards, which are valued at $2000 per academic year.
For maximum financial aid consideration, students are
required to submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)
by March 15. Kentucky Wesleyan is need-blind in its admission process.
Admission Requirements / Application
Each applicant is considered individually on
the basis of his or her academic record, ACT or SAT I scores, extracurricular
involvement, and recommendations. Freshman applicants should generally
be in the top half of their graduating class and have taken a strong college-preparatory
curriculum. A minimum ACT score of 19 or SAT I score of 890, along with
a core GPA of at least 2.25, are required for general admission to the
College. Applicants are considered for admission upon receipt of their
completed application, a $20 application fee, an official high school
transcript, and ACT or SAT I scores.
Kentucky Wesleyan also seeks to enroll transfer, international, and adult students who have demonstrated the ability to succeed in a competitive academic environment. Transfer applicants should submit a completed application, a $20 application fee, official high school transcripts, and official transcripts from all colleges attended. A GPA of at least 2.0 is required for general admission to the College as a transfer student. International applicants must submit a $50 application fee, TOEFL scores (500 or better required) and/or ACT or SAT I scores, and an English translation of their high school transcript.
The Office of Admission is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and by appointment on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Interested students are encouraged to visit the campus during one of the College's weekend open houses in the fall and winter or by individual appointment during the week. Students who wish to stay on campus overnight are welcome to do so at no charge.
Students may apply for admission after completing their
junior year of high school. Applications are evaluated on a rolling basis,
and students can expect to be notified concerning admission to the College
within two weeks of completing their application for admission.