Take Five offers students free path to pursuing passions

Hover over the scholars above to learn more about the array of subjects—from ecofeminism to consumerism in contemporary art—that the latest groups of Take Five Scholars are exploring as part of a fifth, tuition-free year of study.

Since 1986, nearly 1,200 University students have pursued their academic passions through the Take Five Scholars Program, which offers a tuition-free year to complete a self-designed curriculum.

Students like Hailey McAvoy ’18E, ’19 (T5), who fulfilled a dream that started when she was 15 and read Rainer Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet translated from German into English.

“I was blown away by the ability to capture what I thought was an electricity that could only be in German,” she says. ”I’ve wanted to study translation ever since. With Take Five, I can.”

Take Five is unique to the University, giving students a chance to explore academic and professional passions outside their majors. Working with a faculty member who serves as their program advisor, applicants to Take Five design an interdisciplinary selection of courses related to a theme or question they’d like to explore.

Jeffrey Runner, dean of the College and a former Take Five advisor, says Take Five students must study something “completely different” than their undergraduate curriculum.

“We encourage students to think about a topic they have some interest in that’s enriching their experience from their undergraduate degree,” he says.

McAvoy was a dual major in voice and musical arts at the Eastman School of Music, with a heavy schedule that left her unable to take some courses that interested her.

“There’s an advanced poetry seminar I’ve wanted to take for five years on the River Campus but couldn’t because it conflicted with my opera rehearsal schedule,” she says.

Her program is called German Language and Translation.

C. Mike Lindsey ’09 (T5) created a major called Integrative Neurobiology, and a Take Five program titled Understanding Bilingual Representation. He cofounded an urban agriculture startup, NexLoop, in 2016. His brother, Nate Lindsey ’10 (T5), created an interdepartmental major at the University called Alternative Energy and Sustainable Engineering before completing a Take Five program titled Western Literature.

“When I started at Rochester, I quickly ramped up in engineering and optics, then research took over my sophomore year,” says Nate Lindsey, a doctoral student in earth and planetary sciences at the University of California-Berkeley. “By my third year, I realized I hadn’t read a novel in a year.”

He designed a set of courses from the English Department “to steep my brain” in the history of artistic and intellectual thought in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

“I learned to form arguments in writing,” he says.

After enrolling at the Eastman School of Music in 2013 as a piano performance major, Naoki Toyomura ’17, ’18E (T5) took an intro economics class on the River Campus “out of pure curiosity,” and then created a Take Five program called Japanese Language and Culture. Toyomura, Eastman’s 2017-18 Students’ Association president, has since founded Music Admit, a business that helps students find the right music schools and teachers.

“I’m very glad I picked Rochester, because these opportunities don’t exist at other institutions,” he says.

Nisha Modi ’18 (T5) majored in neuroscience and is currently in a Take Five program called The Rights of Muslim Women in Society.

“This year has given me more freedom in terms of understanding where my passions lie,” Modi says. “I’ve talked to friends that go to other universities, and they’re astonished that such a program even exists.”

Janet Sorrells realized before her junior year that there were many topics she was interested in that wouldn’t fit into her hectic schedule as a biomedical engineering major with minors in optics, electrical and computer engineering, and health policy.

Sorrells’s program is called Chinese Language and Culture.

“I choose that because I like to be challenged, and it was something new and completely unfamiliar to me,” she says. “And because Chinese is the most commonly spoken native language on earth.”

This summer, Sorrells will be working as a youth camp counselor in Shanghai, China, before heading to graduate school in the fall.

“The beauty of the Take Five program is that I’m learning for the sake of learning,” she says.

Meet our newest Take 5 class