Whittier College

Overview

Whittier College

Whittier College is a private liberal arts college located in Whittier, California. It was founded in 1887 by members of the Religious Society of Friends and named after John Greenleaf Whittier, a Quaker poet and abolitionist. The institution became secular in the 1940s and currently belongs to the top-ranked colleges in the state with contributions in the fields of biology, physics, and ecology.

Whittier College Key Statistics

The college is composed of 30 academic departments including the Department of Theater and Communication Arts, Department of English Language and Literature, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, and the Department of Business Administration. There are over 50 majors and concentrations across undergraduate and postgraduate programs on offer.

Other Whittier College key statistics include its approximately 1,700 students and more than 100 academic staff. The university’s campus in the city of Whittier offers facilities including its eight residence halls with themed living communities, cafeteria, eatery, health and wellness center, counseling center, various sports facilities, and the Wardman Library that houses numerous books, ebooks, articles, and electronic resources.

Among the notable alumni from the college are historian Willa Baum, former members of the U.S. House of Representatives Wayne R. Grisham and George E. Outland, former California state senator Tony Strickland, and 37th president of the United States Richard Nixon.

The college is affiliated with external organizations such as the Annapolis Group and the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges.

Whittier College Research

The college receives research support from public and private sponsors such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The top fields of Whittier College research are biology, physics, and ecology. Their researchers have attended and presented at conferences such as the International Symposium on Visual Computing, International Conference on Image Processing, and the Parallel Computing conference.

The most cited work from the college is Wu and Dunn’s (1995) “Environmentally responsible logistics systems” published in the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management with more than 1,000 citations to date. The second most cited publication is Adams et al.’s (2011) “Gastrointestinal flora and gastrointestinal status in children with autism--comparisons to typical children and correlation with autism severity” featured in BMC Gastroenterology and has over 810 citations. In addition, the third most cited work is Böhm et al.’s (2013) “The conservation status of the world's reptiles,” which appeared in Biological Conservation. The research paper has more than 800 citations so far.

Research laboratories at Whittier College include the Biology and Biochemistry Faculty Research Laboratory, Microscopy Research Laboratory, and the Flow Cytometry and Q-PCR Research Laboratory from the Department of Biology. Likewise, the Department of Physics and Astronomy houses the Engineering and Physics Research Laboratory, while the Department of Environmental Science and Environmental Studies manages the Environmental Science Faculty Research Laboratory.

There is also the Science and Learning Center which is a five-story building containing flexible laboratories for both teaching and research including the Newsom Research Lab and the Yao Yuan Sze Foundation Movement Laboratory.

You can also learn more about the educational performance of Whittier College in our ranking of US universities & colleges.