CNU Distinctives
Christopher Newport University is a young and vibrant public university in Virginia that has very quickly taken its place in the ranks of the best schools in America. At Christopher Newport students pursue a rich and rigorous curriculum in the liberal arts and sciences. We place great importance on instructing and inspiring our students to live lives of meaning, consequence and purpose. We call that a life of significance. These major tenants of life and education at Christopher Newport create an experience that is distinctive in higher education, not only among public institutions or in Virginia, but across the higher education landscape.
Christopher Newport is a public university that cares about minds and hearts. Our purpose is to form good citizens and leaders.
The life of significance has shaped every important decision that we have made over 25 years. That’s why we study the liberal arts and sciences and emphasize the study of leadership. That’s why we have a rigorous core curriculum of seven courses required of all students. That’s why our students perform thousands of hours of community service. That’s why we built a chapel and celebrate our speaking tradition and honor code.
It is important to us that our students possess a passion for engagement, a commitment to excellence in all things, a powerful sense of responsibility for making the world a better place, and that they develop in their lives a moral compass. These virtues are not spontaneously apprehended. They must be taught by word and example. They must be modeled by the people of this place, and by the university itself in the leadership role it assumes for our community and our commonwealth.
Faculty and staff are precious but students are the most important people on our campus.
Putting students first doesn’t mean we say yes to every request. We cannot. Putting students first doesn’t mean we give grades – they must be earned.
Putting students first means that we look our students in the eye and smile and speak when we walk by. It means we listen, really listen, to their thoughts and concerns. It means that we are actively engaged in their lives. When we encounter a student, we ask ourselves: What is the most loving, helpful, encouraging thing I can say or do right now.
That attitude is woefully missing in public education, but it’s the reality on our campus and it sets us apart. Putting students first means our students learn to put people first for the rest of their lives.
The academic experience at Christopher Newport is rich, rigorous and rewarding. We begin with the liberal arts and sciences. We believe it is the broad and deep education offered by the liberal arts and sciences that provides a platform for success and significance. Our students become leaders of sound judgment, decision-makers who collaborate and cooperate, savvy problem solvers, able communicators, disciplined researchers, powerful teachers, creative engineers, and inspired artists. A college education should not just prepare you to do something; it should prepare you to do *anything*.
All students are required to take seven core courses, including:
- Mathematics
- Foreign language
- Science
- Economics
- American history
- English composition
- Literature
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni reviews the curriculum of over 1,200 colleges and universities every year and reports that Christopher Newport has the most rigorous core curriculum of any public university in America.
Over several decades, Christopher Newport has increased the number of full-time faculty from 166 to 287. Ninety percent of full-time faculty have their terminal degrees and their passion is engaging and teaching students. Our best professors are teaching freshmen and sophomores, as well as juniors and seniors. There are no teaching assistants on our campus, and students are encouraged to participate with faculty in undergraduate research, study abroad and service opportunities. Our faculty are here because they want the chance to be part of our students’ lives and dreams – not just part of their classroom experience.
Over 60% of our classes have 19 students or fewer and, unlike other public institutions, there are no classes on our campus with hundreds and hundreds of students. At Christopher Newport you are in a small class, taught by a gifted professor, who knows your name. Our class size is another way we put students first, and live into our commitment of a culture of kindness and personal attention.
At Christopher Newport, we focus on the living and learning of leadership. In fact, over the last 25 years, the academic and experiential study of leadership has become a hallmark of the Christopher Newport experience. Our students can earn a minor in leadership studies and a second major in leadership.
The pillars of leadership for us are as follows:
- President’s Leadership Program (PLP): co-curricular coursework and experiential opportunities
- The academic Department of Leadership and American Studies
- Wason Center for Civic Leadership: where students are afforded the chance to learn firsthand about lives in government, policy and public service
- Center for Community Engagement: where hundreds of our students engage in hundreds of thousands of hours of service to the community, commonwealth and country every year, learning what true servant leadership is all about, and embracing service forever as part of a life well lived
The PLP invites young women and men who have demonstrated academic success and a passion for engagement, to come to Christopher Newport, and over four years pursue a minor in leadership studies. These are rigorous academic offerings taught by a highly credentialed faculty. Every year about 400 of our 1,200 freshmen participate in PLP, and they are awarded a scholarship for every year of residence on campus and a scholarship for foreign study.
Our country and our world have never needed ethical, thoughtful, creative, visionary leaders more. Christopher Newport is committed to ensuring our graduates enter the world prepared to be those leaders.
Christopher Newport is a real powerhouse in the STEM disciplines. One-third of our students are now majoring in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We have long had excellent programs in biology, mathematics, chemistry, computational science, applied physics and computer engineering.
In recent years we have added majors in molecular biology, neuroscience, computational and applied mathematics, biochemistry, and electrical engineering.
We have a strong, energetic and accomplished faculty and extraordinary facilities. Princeton Review has ranked our science facilities as the 15th best in the nation. Moreover, Christopher Newport is the only non-doctoral university to be selected by Virginia to participate in the multibillion dollar Amazon program.
But beyond the quality of our programs and the excellence of our faculty and facilities, the difference between Christopher Newport STEM graduates and those from other institutions is that we are intentional about making sure our future doctors, researchers, dentists, environmentalists, engineers, nurses and computer scientists understand more than their chosen area of expertise. They understand how they fit in this world. They embrace the scientific universe though a lens of compassion and human insight. With mind and heart.
The Luter School of Business is one of the top ranked undergraduate business programs in the country and offers majors in finance, marketing, management and accounting. Luter also offers a master in financial analysis
In 2021, all of Luter’s 182 graduating seniors took the major field test. This annual national exam measures student learning and is taken by over 100,000 graduating seniors from over 500 institutions. Our students scored in the 96th percentile – the top 4% of the nation.
The fine and performing arts bring joy, beauty and wonder to our lives. Christopher Newport has spent over $125 million to build two world-class facilities:
These two magnificent facilities are connected by a spectacular colonnade envisioned by internationally acclaimed architect I. M. Pei, who designed the Ferguson Center.
These centers empower the lives and illuminate the souls of our students, our community and our commonwealth. They position us to be the leader of cultural life for hundreds of thousands of people – modeling the very life of significance to which we call our students.
The Ferguson Center offers a 1,700-seat concert hall, 500-seat theatre and music performance hall, a 200-seat experimental "black box" theatre and an array of teaching, learning, recital and rehearsal spaces. Our students and faculty perform in these marvelous spaces, but so do the finest performing artists from around the world.
The Torggler is home to four galleries. The vast main gallery welcomes world-class exhibits that change seasonally; our academic gallery presents rotating exhibits by our students, faculty and graduates; our community gallery features the best work from our neighbor artists; and the microgallery showcases unique pieces in an intimate space.
We want our students and our community to explore the arts and discover the powerful role they can play in our lives, delighting the mind and inspiring the heart.
Our job is to instruct and inspire and nothing does that more powerfully than great art and architecture. That is why we unapologetically built buildings of civic proportions and beautiful architecture.
We want our students to have great dreams for their lives and for the life of this country and the world. Everything that we do – the way we live our lives, the lessons that we teach and the buildings that we create – everything is intended to produce that result.
Unlike most schools built over many years and reflecting the imaginations of many different architects, Christopher Newport possesses a transcending neo-Georgian architecture with columns, cupolas, rotundas and red bricks, which reflect the rich history of Virginia. Our campus also includes the dramatic use of glass and light and the latest technology. We are ever mindful of our history and yet our feet are affixed firmly in the 21st century.
This focus on excellence in architecture and landscaping has created a campus now celebrated for its beauty. Princeton Review named Christopher Newport as one of America’s 20 most beautiful schools. Cosmopolitan ranked us No. 3 among the 50 most beautiful colleges and universities in the country.
Our students bring our campus alive with their energy, enthusiasm and intellect, and have contributed immensely to the creation of a campus culture of honor and service and kindness and commitment to others. At Christopher Newport our students speak and smile, and look you in the eye and open doors for each other, and they truly care about others. They appreciate the importance of honor and civic engagement. If they choose to come here, then they already have some understanding of what a meaningful life is all about. Here, for four years, they live it every day and they leave us fully embracing meaning, purpose – significance – as their compass for the rest of their lives.
Most of our students live on campus and this contributes mightily to building, sustaining and shaping our campus culture. We require all freshmen and sophomores to live on campus and overwhelmingly, our upperclass students choose to live on campus.
Christopher Newport is not a place for spectators. We want our students to engage in the classroom and on our campus and the world beyond. On our campus there are over 200 organizations, clubs and activities, including music, theater and dance programs; 24 intercollegiate athletic teams; a marching band of over 200 members; cheerleading; dance team; Greek life involving over 1,100 students; and an amazing array of faith groups.
Christopher Newport has 24 intercollegiate athletic teams in Division III of the NCAA and our student-athletes perform at the highest levels of excellence. We offer extraordinary facilities – rivaling some of the best even at Division I schools, outstanding coaches and our student-athletes compete for national championships. Over the last decade, Christopher Newport has had the highest winning percentage in all sports of any school in Virginia – public or private, large or small. In fall 2021 our women’s soccer team won the national championship.
Seven hundred Christopher Newport students excel in intercollegiate competition. They also go to class and graduate in four years. They are student-athletes – students first.
Every public institution seems to aspire to get bigger and bigger. Not us. We are not interested in getting bigger and bigger. Our purpose is to get better and better. For us, 5,000 students is the right size. At 5,000 students, we are big enough to offer a rich array of academic programs, and we can also know our students by name and be there for them every step of the way. Remaining at this “right size” means we know we can stay true to our students first commitment.