CULTIVATING MEANING & PURPOSE
Semester Programs ~ Fellowships ~ Short Courses
Thoreau College is an innovative residential microcollege offering place-based semester programs, summer courses, and fellowships for young adults in beautiful rural southwestern Wisconsin. Our programs immerse students in authentic community, meaningful conversations about great books and ideas, hands-on labor and homesteading skills, and deep engagement with the natural world through wilderness expeditions and cultivation of ecological literacy.
When I came to Thoreau College, I really didn’t know what to expect. It was in a part of the country I had never visited, learning skills I had limited exposure to, and I wasn’t sure what kind of people would be there. I expected it to be an interesting and unique experience, but I couldn’t have anticipated how truly transformational it would’ve been. In my time here, I learned so much about how to be in community and how to build a life that feels purposeful. The small scale provides a sense of mentorship and recognition of personhood that enables everyone in it to grow and strive to be better people. While I really don’t think a website or a paragraph can do justice to the experience of being here, I will say that it is a place that challenges all of its students in unique and beneficial ways. If you are searching for “more” out of your education, Thoreau College is the place you should come.
THE GREEN HEART OF THE MIDWEST
Thoreau College is rooted in the vibrant rural community of Viroqua, Wisconsin, in the heart of the Driftless Region, a scenic unglaciated landscape of ridges and valleys traversed by countless small streams and dotted with organic farms and small towns. Viroqua and the Driftless Region is our campus and our home.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
~ Henry David Thoreau
MISSION
Rooted in the ridges and valleys of the Driftless Region of the upper Midwest, Thoreau College models a transformative liberal arts curriculum that immerses students in authentic community, shared labor and governance, and rigorous engagement with great works and natural phenomena. Thoreau College creates a context where students can nurture their sacred curiosity, connect with their deepest selves, and cultivate the capacities they will need to manifest their highest aspirations for the world.
Thoreau College understands liberal arts education to be fundamentally concerned with the cultivation of free human beings who have the capacity to impart direction and meaning to their lives and bring about positive transformation in the world. In our striving to realize an education that meets the needs of the whole human being–body, soul and spirit–we have been deeply informed by the lives and work of Henry David Thoreau (author of Walden), Rudolf Steiner (founder of Waldorf education), and LL Nunn (founder of Deep Springs College).
DREAMS & OBSERVATIONS
A Day in the Life as a Thoreau College Fellow
by Elijah Greiner My day starts six-o-clock. Not because it has to (I could certainly sleep another hour) but I like to live deliberately. I’m used to bunkhouses and dorm rooms. Here I have a room all to myself to stretch and dress without concern of waking up my housemates. My breakfast is rolled...
An Evening with HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Thoreau College is thrilled to welcome our local community for an evening of film and conversation about the life and legacy of Henry David Thoreau with documentarian Erik Ewers, director of the recent PBS/Ken Burns documentary film HENRY DAVID THOREAU.
Inside The Emerging Microcollege Movement
By Kerry McDonald, Forbes Contributor. For Layla Coyne, choosing to attend a microcollege was a natural extension of her unconventional K-12 schooling experience. As a middle schooler, she left a traditional public school to attend Rock Tree Sky, a self-directed learning community in Southern...
