Fairhaven College
liberal arts college at Western Washington University, United States
Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies is an interdisciplinary liberal arts college at Western Washington University. Instead of completing the general education requirements at Western, students take interdisciplinary classes at Fairhaven, which aim to cover the same breadth and depth of subjects, but within small, interdisciplinary seminars. When it comes time to move onto "concentrated studies," students have the option of pursuing any of the majors or minors offered by Western Washington University, but may also choose to shape their own interdisciplinary concentration or major, combining independent study, internships, and Western Washington University courses with Fairhaven courses to define their course of study. Another unique feature of the college: nearly all classes follow a small seminar format rather than a large lecture format. Class enrollment is rarely above twenty students and will sometimes have two professors for a given class instead of only one. Fairhaven students do not receive letter grades; instead, they are given narrative evaluations, in addition to writing their own self-evaluations, for each class.
History
Founded in 1967, with a five-member faculty and an initial class of thirteen students, Fairhaven was housed in the former Latter Day Saints House. Fairhaven students lived in the Western dorms and took classes both at Western and at Fairhaven, while helping plan Fairhaven's future. During that academic year and the next one, Fairhaven's campus was under construction just south of Western's campus. The 1968 academic year saw Fairhaven's first full-size class of 200 students arrive.
The public source identifies “Fairhaven College” as liberal arts college at Western Washington University, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fairhaven, College and liberal.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5430465. VIAF identifies the subject as 157092261. The Library of Congress control number is n79045708. Authority coordinates are 48.730, -122.486. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fairhaven College” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.