President’s Welcome

Centre College offers you the opportunity to earn an extraordinary liberal arts and sciences education, and put that education into practice in real-world settings, while exploring the future in our Career Exploration Communities. The Centre Experience ensures community engagement, participation in hands-on research and career internships, and purposeful networking with alumni and industry leaders. At Centre, you can build talents you might not even know you possess while making a positive difference in the world. With more than 50 majors and minors, from business to biology, psychology to history, and Chinese to data science, our exceptional faculty are dedicated to your success. We are dedicated to academic excellence and opportunity in educating future leaders and global citizens. Your Centre Experience will build the knowledge, skills, and competencies that prepare you for an exciting and rewarding future.

Centre is also a leading institution for study abroad, with semester-long programs in nine countries, including Mexico, France, England, and Ghana, along with study away programs in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Lake Tahoe. More than 85% of Centre students study abroad or away at least once, and our CentreTerm each January offers more opportunities to explore the world.

Career readiness is an integral part of a Centre education, and an impressive 89% of recent graduates participated in either an internship and/or an undergraduate research experience on campus or around the world. These opportunities help students find their first post-graduation jobs or entrance into an ideal graduate program, law school, or medical school. One year after graduation, 98% of Centre grads are employed or in graduate school.

Of course, cost is a very serious consideration, but I would insist that a Centre College education is the best and most important investment in your future. A place of high achievement as well as high opportunity, Centre’s exceptional commitment to expanding access to a prestigious education — regardless of financial need — is made possible in part by devoted alumni. Philanthropy and our strong endowment allow the College to provide more than $41 million in financial aid each year. This includes full tuition scholarship initiatives, such as the Grissom and Lincoln Scholars Programs as well as support for two cohorts of Posse Scholars, 60 Bonner Scholars and Leaders, and New Horizon Scholars. Centre’s support for talented students with financial need and first-generation students has expanded greatly in the last decade and the College has pledged to increase the number of students who are Pell-eligible or ineligible for federal aid to 25 percent in the next five years.

Centre is a place where you will create friendships that will last a lifetime. More than 98% of students live in our residence halls, and the student life team partners with student leaders to ensure that campus life is vibrant, fun, inclusive, respectful, and safe. There are more than 100 student clubs and activities on campus, 42% of students participate in the arts, 40% of students belong to a fraternity or sorority, nearly half participate in a varsity sport and nearly three-quarters of students participate in intramural and club sports. Important conversations take place in and out of the classroom and there are dozens of campus performances each semester in the renowned Norton Center, including Broadway shows, concerts, and eminent guest speakers.

A Centre education involves experiential learning, community engagement opportunities, career readiness and encourages the pushing of boundaries. Here, we prepare students for lives of learning, leadership, and service on a highly residential campus where we live and work together.

We want our graduates not just to be able to thrive; we want you to be prepared to assume leadership roles because of what you’ve experienced on campus, in your classes, in your everyday interactions with our faculty and staff, and when you study abroad.

Finally, our brand-new and recently upgraded athletic facilities are remarkable, with new fields or facilities for baseball, football, men’s and women’s soccer, field hockey, softball, and lacrosse, indoor and outdoor facilities for track and field, including a 200-meter indoor track, an aquatics center with an Olympic-size pool, an upgraded gym for basketball and volleyball, and a multipurpose field house. Home to 25 NCAA Division III men’s and women’s sports teams, Centre teams compete successfully for conference and national titles, and our new facilities make participating and watching these competitions even more exciting.

Our trustees, faculty, staff, and current students are all committed to a campus culture characterized by hard work, play, accomplishment, and kindness. We look forward to seeing all that you will accomplish in this educational adventure we call the Centre Experience.

My best,
Milton C. Moreland
President