Linfield's Academic Organization

This catalog provides separate sections describing the college’s three main academic/administration units: the McMinnville Campus; the Portland Campus; and the Division of Continuing Education.

• The McMinnville Campus is the home of most of the college’s academic departments. It also houses the International Programs Office, the Office of Career Services, and the Alumni Relations Office.
  The McMinnville Campus section includes complete descriptions of each academic department operating in McMinnville, along with listings of courses in those departments specific to the Portland Campus and DCE.
• The Portland Campus houses the college’s Nursing Program.
  The Portland Campus section contains descriptions of these programs.
• The Division of Continuing Education is headquartered on the McMinnville Campus, branches into eight satellite locations in Oregon, and is online throughout the United States.
  The DCE section describes the Adult Degree Program (ADP) as well as admission and administrative policies that differ from those on the other two campuses.

Linfield College: A World of Difference

Linfield College is an independent, comprehensive undergraduate institution, nationally recognized for its strong teaching faculty, outstanding science programs, and distinctive international emphasis. Linfield has a challenging and exciting academic program that features a broad liberal arts core and an atmosphere in which there is genuine concern for individuals and their progress.

In its McMinnville, Portland and Adult Degree Programs, Linfield enrolls more than 2,500 students and offers 47 majors and three undergraduate degrees – Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Students in all three programs complete a liberal arts curriculum. The general education requirement called The Linfield Curriculum fosters the development of wholly educated individuals through a series of courses spanning the arts and humanities, natural sciences, and social and behavioral sciences. The Linfield Curriculum encourages inquiry, analysis, and imagination, habits of mind that provide the foundation for reasoned action, wonder and continued learning in all aspects of life.

Linfield provides students with an international experience. Students from 29 states and 24 countries live and study together. More than 50 percent of Linfield students study abroad as part of their regular academic experience.

Linfield's Pioneer Heritage

Linfield is one of the oldest colleges in the Pacific Northwest. It traces its roots to an institution established by the Baptists in 1849 – a time of expansion and excitement on the Western frontier. The Baptist College at McMinnville was chartered in 1858 by the Oregon Territorial Legislature. It was later named McMinnville College.

The name was changed to Linfield College in 1922 in memory of a Baptist minister whose widow, Frances Ross Linfield, gave property worth more than $250,000 to the college. Six years later, Linfield was fully accredited by the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges. The college is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA.

There are several other important milestones in Linfield’s history:

• The Linfield Research Institute, which gives undergraduates the opportunity to work with faculty on research, was established in 1956. It has contributed to Linfield’s strong record in science education.
• The Linfield Division of Continuing Education began in 1975. Today, it serves students in several Oregon locations and online throughout the United States, giving working adults the opportunity to complete a bachelor’s degree.
• In 1976, Linfield began a student exchange program with Kanto Gakuin University in Japan. Today, Linfield offers study abroad in Austria, Australia/New Zealand, China/Hong Kong, Costa Rica, England, Ecuador, France, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Senegal, South Korea and
  Spain. January Term, with its popular four-week intensive courses, typically offers classes at several domestic and international locations.
• Linfield’s Portland Campus was established in 1982 when the college entered into an affiliation with Good Samaritan Hospital and Medical Center and began offering a bachelor’s degree program in nursing.
• In 1998, Linfield more than doubled the physical size of its McMinnville Campus with the acquisition of 115 acres and four buildings from the Hewlett-Packard Company. As a result, Linfield has grown from 78 acres in 1998 to 193 today. The James F. Miller Fine Arts Center opened in 2001, followed in 2003 by Kenneth W. Ford Hall, which houses the Marshall Theatre and the Jereld R. Nicholson Library. The Vivian A. Bull Music Center opened in 2006.
• The Linfield Center for the Northwest enhances undergraduate education through the active cultivation of a collaborative experiential learning community. Undergraduates establish regional connections through collaborative research with faculty, regionally based internship experiences and local service learning projects. Upon conclusion of the summer research, a unique feature of LCN programs is that students work with professors to incorporate their findings into the classroom within the next year. All of the LCN’s projects, including the Kemper and First Federal Internships, are disseminated in a variety of ways including research papers, presentations, conferences and the Digital Commons digital repository.  http://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/lcn/

The pioneer spirit and commitment to learning have guided Linfield’s growth for more than 150 years. While the college has changed much from the early days, its mission has remained constant – to teach undergraduates in an atmosphere of academic freedom that fosters intellectual rigor, creativity, and a sense of personal and social responsibility.