Mission Statement
The Sphere College Project provides an environment for each student to discover and pursue their passion and vocation for enrichment of the human experience.
Overview
The Sphere College Project is a project to create an institution of higher education for adults of all ages who are not a good fit for the traditional model of higher education. The College Project is financially accessible to all. Yes, all.
The essential idea behind the project is to create an institution of higher education that helps students identify what they wish to accomplish with their lives. Each student will then work closely with faculty mentors to build an individualized, interdisciplinary program of study directly connected with their goals. Finally, each student will develop and realize a project that puts their passions into action using the skills they have acquired. This project may be small and local or large and global in scope.
The Vision
Picture this as a short-term vision: 100 students and 10 faculty members with a diverse knowledge base in the Phoenixville area. Classes on a wide variety of topics in different locations around town, providing local businesses with rental income and building a strong relationship businesses in our community. Students and faculty getting together in small groups to share meals, bringing their cost of food down while discussing topics from their classes, fostering a strong learning community. Students and faculty coming together to apply their creativity to figure out practical ways to develop Phoenixville in a manner that creates truly sustainable, environmentally sound businesses and jobs in a way that is harmonious with and respectful of those who have lived here for decades. All of this being accomplished while enhancing the natural beauty of our area and keeps our hard-earned money here in the borough rather than going into the bank accounts of people who have no emotional investment in our community. Students identifying and pursuing their passions, and becoming involved in community-enhancing projects like community gardens and youth education activities, with the mentorship of faculty members and local community leaders. The College taking on projects that will financially sustain it and help it to grow, and continuing to unfold in a way that pragmatically serves the student population.
We can do this! And when we have stabilized it here, we will expand into other communities when the time is right.
What Makes The Sphere College Project Different?
The students associated with the Project discuss this question in one of our classes. See and hear what they say in this video: http://www.vimeo.com/9087364, and keep in mind that we seek to do this for a population that is not served by the current model of higher education: people who either do not have the financial means to pursue their education, or for whom the traditional lecture model simply does not work.
Location
The Sphere College Project is located in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. To keep costs low and to build a good relationship with area businesses and the community at large we will utilize existing property. Classes have met in Wolfgang Books and in the Colonial Theatre. We currently meet in St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. If you are in the Phoenixville area and interested in joining, please send your contact info to admissions AT spherecollege.org and we’ll get back to you asap. When we have an office and a phone we’ll list them here!
Contact:
The Sphere College Project
P.O. Box 1024
Phoenixville, PA 19460
Phone: 484-302-1600
Email: info AT spherecollege DOT org
THE SPHERE COLLEGE PROJECT IS CURRENTLY NOT A DEGREE-GRANTING ORGANIZATION.
This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education describes our status as of April 2011.
April 14, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Hi Richard,
Congratulations on the website, glad to see things moving along…this will be great tool when referring students. Hope all is well. Let’s talk soon.
Regards,
Brie Bearden
April 21, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Hi Richard,
This looks great! I am looking forward to learning more on Thurs. Thank you for keeping me in the loop and being bold enough to do this. 23 students…outstanding.
Julie
April 21, 2009 at 5:42 pm
The number will probably fluctuate (the number who have expressed interest has gone up to 28) and settle down to a smaller number as people think about whether they’re really ready to commit right now, or have committed to something else, but it’s definitely more about quality. This is a really exciting time. Thanks for your enthusiasm and support (you and everyone else!).
August 19, 2009 at 1:40 am
Hi Richard,
I like what you are doing.
It interests me and moves me.
Hy
August 19, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Thanks, Hy, and again to all the others for your words of support. A venture of this magnitude isn’t accomplished in a vacuum. When we pull together we just may achieve something wonderful and potentially transformative for people.
A new blog entry is in the works. Stay tuned.
December 4, 2009 at 3:52 am
Hi Richard
Glad to see things have started rolling. Congratulations and good luck.
aman
February 21, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Peggy Farley sent me the video and i am very interested, and delighted that you are doing this. What a project to undertake in these times, but so needed! Thank you. If you would like it, we could put something into the Upattinas School Newsletter and a link on our website – or maybe it’s too soon for that. Let us know.
Sandy
February 22, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Yes! Now is the time! I look forward to meeting you in ‘realspace’, Sandy.
February 22, 2010 at 4:07 pm
In fact, Sandy, students, alumni and others connected with Uppatinas may be interested in submitting an entry to the Sphere College Short Film Contest: http://spherecollege.wordpress.com/film-contest/
April 10, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Hi Richard,
We spoke today at the Plaza in Phoenixville while I was doing voter registration. Glad I found the site (also facebook – cross posting). I am interested in the school, I’ll continue to gather information from the sites and hope to talk to you again.
- Greg
April 25, 2010 at 5:25 am
It was a pleasure to see some new introjectory thought for our community in Pottstown, Pa. Look forward to working with you. Cheers and Good luck.
April 28, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Hi James, it was very nice to meet you. Thank you for your kind words. I was delighted with the response from Pottstown and will be following up. Stay tuned! -Richard
November 22, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Richard,
It was a great pleasure to meet you again, this time
with ample time to get a good introduction to your
work with Sphere College. I hope we can follow up our conversation in the near future. Please keep me informed
about the progress of your work,
Very fond regards,
Ron Thomas
ps kindly respond via my own email
March 21, 2011 at 11:47 pm
Great project. I live in Lancaster county. Nice to see something like this happening PA.
March 22, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Thanks for the comment, Nathan. And I just checked out your blog. Love the photos. I’ll be checking back to learn more about the plants. Really great.
Richard
May 30, 2011 at 8:48 pm
I’m still a little confused about this project, the college is building a curriculum around what the student wants to learn. So does that mean if I want to be an engineer or physicist, I can learn that from this college?
May 30, 2011 at 10:12 pm
That’s the general idea, but it’s broader than that. We’re dealing with adults who are generally not a good fit for the current model of higher education. The first phase is to give students sufficiently broad experience in multiple areas, and to ensure that they have connected with a passion that will carry them through the challenging tasks of learning that lay ahead. If a student says he or she wants to be a physicist, they need to then convince a panel that this is indeed their passion. Then, with mentorship they will identify the interdisciplinary knowledge they need to accomplish that goal. Chances are they would narrow their goal down considerably more than ‘a physicist’. They will then construct a program of study that—and this is the most important part—fits their learning style, allowing them to go more deeply into the topic. There are many details that don’t fit into comments here, but perhaps that will help explain our model.
May 31, 2011 at 7:18 am
Free College looks like a bright educational model to me, especially if you’ve read the wealth of the nations by Adam Smith. Having mass amounts of educated individuals by this model would drive the current technology labor market into the future! I’m a current physics major and I want to be a researcher especially for technology such as neural prosthetics, How much convincing do I have to give this panel to let them know I want to one day give them technology that will allow them to walk again as if they had a new limb?