The Pepperdine Pact

From the moment they step foot on campus, Seaver College students are viewed as whole people with unending potential. We illustrate our commitment to undergraduates throughout their first year by prioritizing academic programming designed to place them in community with peers, faculty members, and ministry leaders. 

Courses such as Waves 100, Foundations of Reasoning, and Chapel immerse our new students in small groups dedicated to critical inquiry and collaborative learning. Within these nurturing environments, undergraduates forge friendships, develop new learning skills, and begin to successfully bridge the gap between high school and their newfound independence.

Rooted in the liberal arts, Seaver College unites its campus community through shared academic experiences. With a vertically organized Seaver Core curriculum, students bond throughout courses engineered to enhance their critical thinking abilities, their innate passions, and their professional skills. 

Yet, beyond this academic foundation, Seaver College offers a wide variety of distinctive learning opportunities that unify students and faculty members together. Be it the Great Books Colloquium, the Social Action and Justice Colloquium, or an active research laboratory, our undergraduates develop wisdom and pursue truth in community with others.

Throughout their education at Seaver College, students will find themselves immersed in a multitude of learning communities. While based in Malibu, California, we offer undergraduates the opportunity to learn, live, and grow together at a total of eight campuses on four different continents (North America, South America, Asia, and Europe). 

The experience of developing intellectually while, at the same time, exploring a foreign environment has proven transformational for our undergraduates, who emerge from these experiences with new knowledge, cultural competencies, and friends.

Good writing is good thinking. Knowing this to be true, Seaver College emphasizes the written word throughout its academic curricula. In this way, we help students cultivate the ability to organize their thoughts, shape comprehensive arguments, and communicate clearly. 

Within our liberal arts curriculum, all students develop a junior writing portfolio—or a collection of academic papers from three select courses. In addition, each of the 45 majors we offer includes a series of writing-intensive classes to help our students develop their writely voice and learn to effectively express themselves.

Life is one big group project. To live fully, we must possess the ability to work well with others in pursuit of a common goal. At Seaver College, we actively practice the skill of collaboration within our course work and our extra-curricular offerings. 

Whether its a Capstone course that partners students with a local business, a digital humanities class bent on actively preserving a rare book, or a Model United Nations competition taking place overseas, Seaver College students are challenged to become valued teammates in group settings. Across each of our eight academic divisions undergraduates apply this all-important skill both in the classroom and the real-world.

Discovery. Innovation. The pursuit of truth. These things occur at Seaver College on a daily basis. As an R2 institution, we invite students to be active partners in the quest to learn more about God’s creation. No matter your interest, we have faculty experts who are eager to collaborate on a wide array of topics from the natural sciences to the arts and humanities.

As an integral part of Seaver College’s research laboratories and cohorts, undergraduates are empowered to go out into the research field, collect and synthesize data, and ultimately share their findings in scholarly journals or at academic conferences. Our academic programming and various grants initiatives are engineered to ensure students have the opportunity to exercise their skills and knowledge in these experiential settings.

Perspective depends upon experience. At Seaver College, we stretch our students’ view of the world by encouraging them to go—go across the globe, go meet people unlike yourself, go explore a new topic in a new land.  Leveraging our nationally ranked international programs, we empower young learners to earn their college degree while building cultural competencies abroad.

More than 80 percent of Seaver College undergraduates study abroad during their education. With that, 90 percent of our international program alumni find a job within six months of graduation. These statistics speak to both the capacity and effectiveness of our global learning emphasis.

Finished products demonstrate curricular competence, growth, and exciting areas of potential improvement. Seaver College provides its students with distinct opportunities to grow their portfolio throughout their undergraduate education. With a robust digital commons, various undergraduate research journals, and a symposium dedicated student scholarship, we help learners chart their growing CV and upward academic trajectory. 

Recently, student involvement in these various campus initiatives has grown. For example, over the last three years, participation in the University’s Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Achievement Symposium has increased by more than 100 students. This statistic illustrates our commitment to supporting and preserving undergraduate accomplishments.

“Freely ye received; freely ye give.” This is Pepperdine University’s school motto, the foundation of our service-oriented educational programs. At Seaver College, we teach our students to use their talents and passions for the good of humanity. Holding fast to our Christian mission, our institution helps undergraduates understand how to employ their skills in support of their local and global neighbors. 

It could be the service-leadership project in the Business Administration Division; an effort to fight communal food insecurity with a nutritional science faculty member; or a chance to actively impact a local missions group through the Social Action and Justice Colloquium, regardless of your field of study, Seaver College ensures its students learn by giving back to others.

A college education is a launch pad for professional success. Seaver College ensures this idea holds true by opening unique doors opportunities for their students to grow their vocational networks and learn through the successful completion of competitive internships. 

With a Career Center dedicated to supporting each student and their professional growth, we connect undergraduates with career advisors and coaches, offer developmental workshops, and oversee their initial ventures into the professional marketplace. Given these resources and our emphasis on experiential learning, many of our majors require an internship. The success of this professional focus speaks for itself: historically, 93 percent of Seaver students who participate in an internship are employed within six months of graduation.

Capstone course - A culminating class, experience, or project that exercises the skills and wisdom learned throughout one’s college experience. Every Seaver College student, across all our majors, participates in a senior capstone prior to graduation. We believe these experiences illustrate the critical, technical, and practical abilities that our undergraduates develop  while completing our curriculum. 

Varying in size and scope, a Seaver College capstone could be an extensive original research thesis, an active consulting project for an external client, or a senior exhibition in the fine arts. Congruent amongst these various options, though, is one specific outcome: they all feature a public demonstration of competence—proof that our graduating students are now prepared to serve beyond the bounds of the academy.