James Madison College (JMC) was founded in 1967 — a time of both radical innovations in higher education and political turbulence on national and international stages. At that time, public universities were called to provide meaningful education that would serve and build a better world. At this critical juncture of our founding, James Madison College was created to integrate different disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, and to innovatively build a community of students and scholars who would work together to understand and address the pressing challenges of public affairs. The vision was to create “a residential college merging the best attributes of a small college with an undergraduate education focusing on public affairs and firmly rooted in liberal arts.”
The college aimed to extend learning beyond the classroom through co-curricular events, applied learning and integration of scholarship into the educational environment. The education offered by the college was always experimental, aiming to answer enduring social, political, economic and cultural questions from interdisciplinary and holistic perspectives such as: What is a good life? What is justice? What are the old and new challenges to liberal democracy? How can diverse, complex societies coexist sustainably, inclusively, peacefully?
At Madison, we experience our legacy of experimentation and continue to offer interdisciplinary and holistic approaches to understanding and addressing these challenges. Our mission is to continue to offer a responsive and transformative educational experience for students.