COE COLLEGE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
The College
Coe College is a private, coeducational, liberal arts college that specializes in turning good students into accomplished writers, scientists, musicians, ecologists, artists, bankers, and businesspeople. A unique sequence of activities, including a required term of practical experience, leads students step-by-step through their four-year program. Ninety-eight percent of Coe graduates are either working or in graduate school within six months of graduation.
The College's 1,300 students enter Coe with an average ACT score of 24 and an average GPA of 3.5; almost 50 percent graduate from Coe with two majors. Students represent thirty-four states and sixteen countries; 55 percent come from Iowa, 20 percent from other Midwestern states, 6 percent from abroad, and the remainder from across the U.S.
All students live on campus in one of five residence halls, which offer both single-sex and coed-by-floor options. The halls contain computer labs, vending machines, debit-card laundry facilities, kitchens, and television lounges. Roughly 35 percent of all students, including first-year students, bring cars to campus.
The list of active student clubs at any given time numbers sixty; interests range from literary to activist to social. Twenty-three percent of students belong to one of five national fraternities and three national sororities; nearly three quarters take part in intramural sports.
A member of the Iowa Conference, Coe competes at the NCAA Division III level in men's baseball, basketball, cross-country, diving, football, golf, soccer, swimming, tennis, track, and wrestling and in women's basketball, cross-country, diving, golf, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track, and volleyball. Intercollegiate and recreational athletes alike make year-round use of the K. Raymond Clark Racquet Center, which includes four racquetball courts, two squash courts, four indoor and six outdoor tennis courts, weight and exercise rooms, and a 200-meter indoor track. The softball field and football field (which is surrounded by an eight-lane all-weather track) can be found adjacent to the racquet center. In the well-equipped Eby Fieldhouse, the gymnasium, wrestling room, climbing wall, athletic training facilities, and eight-lane swimming pool and diving area can be found. Also housed in Eby is the recently renovated 8,000-square-foot fitness center. The weight-training area includes six supine benches, four squat racks, four Olympic platforms, five hammer strength machines, dumbbells, and twelve paramount station machines. Elliptical machines, stair steppers, stationary bikes, and treadmills are also available. Batting cages with natural pitching mounds for baseball and softball are located in lower Eby as well.
Location
Cedar Rapids, nestled in the rolling hills of eastern Iowa, is a safe and hospitable town of 175,000 people. A relaxed place to live in, the city is within a 5-hour drive of Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Omaha, and St. Louis. The Eastern Iowa Airport, a regional airport served by five major airlines, is located in Cedar Rapids. The city offers a major museum of art, a nationally recognized symphony orchestra, and a strong community theater as well as malls, movie theaters, and dance clubs. Iowa City, just 25 minutes by car from the campus, is a favorite destination for students in search of shopping, foreign films, and roving poets.
Iowa has the highest literacy rate in the country and attracts more out-of-state college students than all but three other states.
Majors and Degrees
Coe awards the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and Bachelor of Music degrees. Majors include accounting, African-American studies, American studies, art, Asian studies, athletic training, biochemistry, biology, business administration, chemistry, classical studies, computer science, economics, education, English, environmental science, French, French studies, gender studies, general science, German, German studies, history, literature, mathematics, molecular biology, music, nursing, philosophy, physical education, physics, political science, prearchitecture, predentistry, pre-engineering, prelaw, premedicine, psychology, public relations, religion, sociology, Spanish, Spanish studies, speech, theater arts, and writing. Students may combine courses from two or more academic areas to create an interdisciplinary concentration.
Student teachers may earn certification in art, elementary, music, physical, and secondary education.
Academic Programs
Coe's academic program couples the timelessness of the classics with the immediacy of hands-on learning. In addition to a major, students must complete the first-year seminar, two courses in the natural sciences, two in the social sciences, three courses in Western culture, and three in international culture.
Students must also complete 5 hours of community service, attend issue dinners, and take part in career planning seminars. The sequence culminates with a practical experience requirement, which can be satisfied through an internship, research, practicum, or participation in one of Coe's many study-abroad options. An optional Leadership Program gives selected students advanced leadership training.
Coe follows a traditional two-semester calendar with an optional May term.
Off-Campus Programs
Coe's location in Cedar Rapids is a big benefit for students who opt to satisfy the practical experience requirement through an internship. Law firms, television stations, marketing agencies, art galleries, accounting firms, and major software and telecommunications companies are all just a few minutes from campus. St. Luke's Medical Laboratories is located across the street from the campus. Students may also easily secure internships in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., or virtually any other major city in the country.
Those students who choose to study abroad have an equally wide selection. Coe students may earn credit for living and studying in Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Students of the natural and social sciences often satisfy Coe's practical experience requirement through research supervised by a Ph.D. faculty member. Recent topics have included the physical properties of glass compounds (physics), a comparative analysis of trees and grasses in decreasing the fertilizer runoff from farm fields (environmental science), and how EEG patterns differ between highly creative and normal people during problem solving (psychology).
Academic Facilities
Stewart Memorial Library gives students access to two commercial online services and dozens of microcomputers in addition to more than 216,000 books and bound journals and more than 16,000 periodicals, microfilm, and audiovisual materials. The library offers comfortable seating for more than 600, with well-lit group study tables, individual study desks, and conference rooms. The College's $4-million art collection, including works by Grant Wood and Marvin Cone, is displayed in the library galleries.
Coe's $3-million campuswide fiber-optic network connects students and professors with each other and the wider world via the Internet. Residence hall rooms are equipped with one network port for each student, giving students round-the-clock network access. In addition to the more than 260 computers available around campus for general use, Coe offers special computer labs for students of music, teacher education, art, theater, business, and life and physical sciences. Two general-use labs are open 24 hours a day.
Open 70 hours a week, the Coe Writing Center offers free coffee, computer disks, and advice on everything from grammar to writing style. It is staffed by student tutors who provide help on writing assignments that range from first-year English to senior honors papers.
Dows Fine Arts Center features a 300-seat theater with computerized light boards and a computer-aided design system; spacious fine arts studios for ceramics, painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, fabric design, and graphic design; and a well-equipped computer graphics lab with animation capabilities.
In the Peterson Hall of Science, students have hands-on access to a laser with doubling and quadrupling crystals, liquid and gas chromatographs, a UV-visible spectrophotometer, a nuclear quadrupole resonance spectrometer, a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, and global positioning system (GPS) equipment.
Costs
The costs for 200405 were $28,600, including $22,290 for tuition, $5950 for room and board, and $360 for activity fees. Annual miscellaneous costsbooks, transportation, and personal expensestypically range from $1000 to $1500.
Financial Aid
Coe awards renewable merit-based scholarships to students with strong records of accomplishment in academics, fine arts, foreign language, science, writing, and business/economics/accounting.
The average financial aid package offered to incoming students for fall 2004 totaled more than $21,000. To apply for aid, students must submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Iowa residents should submit their forms before March1 to qualify for the Iowa Tuition Grant. To request an early estimate form, interested students should call 319-399-8540.
Faculty
Coe's 80 full-time and 58 part-time faculty members teach classes with an average size of 16 students. Ninety-five percent hold the highest degree available in their field; all are committed to the students they teach. The student-faculty ratio is 12:1.
Student Government
The student body is governed by the Student Senate, whose members and officers are elected annually by students. In addition to planning campus activities and special events, the Student Senate appoints 2 students to serve as voting members of faculty committees. These committees deal with academic policies, admission and financial aid, athletics, public events, off-campus study, and the library.
Admission Requirements
Coe seeks dynamic students from across the country and around the world who can demonstrate strong academic achievement, intellectual curiosity, extracurricular participation, and community involvement. Coe requires a minimum 3.0 GPA (on a 4.0 scale), either an ACT score of at least 20 or a combined SAT score of at least 1000, and a ranking among the top 40 percent of the student's high school class for regular admission. While not required, an on-campus interview is strongly recommended.
Application and Information
In addition to a completed application, interested students should submit official SATI or ACT results, an official high school transcript, a guidance counselor's recommendation, and a personal essay. For notification by January15, students should submit all materials by December1. For notification by March15, the deadline is March1. Coe requires a nonrefundable $200 deposit to secure a place in the entering class.
Interested students may attend one of Coe's high school visits, college days, and off-campus receptions or come for one of many visit programs and scholarship competitions. Both students and their parents are invited to contact:
