Alpha Program
The Alpha Program matches the University’s most experienced faculty and scholars with first-year students in small, seminar-style classes. Alpha aks you to challenge yourself academically, encourages you to travel into realms of thought you have previously only imagined, provides occasions to match wits with some of the Loyola faculty’s best minds, and offers a chance to meet other first-year students who share the same passion for learning and knowledge.

Alpha Seminars
Where Reason and Belief Coincide
In Alpha, you will discover the vitality of the Catholic educational tradition, which holds that belief and reason are mutually illuminating and that the examined life is worth living. A Jesuit education explores the ways in which this ideal affects human culture, and Alpha seminars represent Jesuit education at its best. Alpha seminars, which are limited to 16 students, focus on disciplines as wide-ranging as theology and business, literature and biology, computer science and fine arts, and philosophy and history. Seminar professors will introduce you to their scholarly work, sharing the benefits of careful reading, critical writing, scholastic conversation, and the life of the mind. Outside the classroom, you’ll spend time engaging in cultural excursions designed to complement the seminars and enrich your understanding of the world around you.

Alpha House
A Living-Learning Community Option
Students who choose to live in Alpha House will enroll in one Alpha seminar and will live together in apartment-style rooms in Campion Tower or a double room in a traditional-style residence hall. These living-learning communities will provide students with an opportunity to share their passion for learning both in and out of the classroom and will create an environment that supports the hallmarks of a Jesuit education, where intellectual, social, and spiritual pursuits blend seamlessly. Throughout the year, Alpha faculty members will host programs with the resident assistants for Alpha House members. Other shared activities will include community service projects, monthly Jesuit values dinner discussions, a theater trip, and more!

Core Requirements
C - Indicates that the course fills a core curriculum requirement
D - Indicates that the course fills a core diversity requirement

Other courses can count as one of the three non-departmental electives necessary for all students as a graduation requirement.

The Director
Ilona M. McGuiness, Ph.D.
Dean of First-Year Students and Academic Services

The Faculty
The Alpha faculty, among the very best teachers and scholars at Loyola, are dedicated men and women who have devoted their lives to the study and command of their disciplines. They will share their work with you, helping you venture further into the world of academics and welcoming you into Loyola’s community of scholars. Your Alpha professor will serve as your academic advisor until you declare your major, helping you to register for classes, consider possible majors, and to make decisions that could affect your future career. Most importantly, you will begin a relationship that will have a lasting effect on your entire experience at Loyola.

Common Text Program
The Common Text program will involve every member of the first-year class in reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. Your Alpha class will meet to discuss this book during Fall Orientation in preparation for the Common Text events that take place once the semester begins.

Other Information
First-year students normally enroll in five three-credit classes per semester. The Alpha seminar is one of these five courses.