I took a UniTru (https://www.theunitru.com/) tour on January 21 with a student at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She showed me the campus through a conferencing app on her phone. It was a bit jumpy for my stomach, but I got to revisit the campus (I was there in 2025 with an IECA tour) and refresh my memory. 

My tour guide

Kaylie is a senior softball player at Dickinson from a small school on Long Island. She said the school isn’t too small for her. As a senior, she has a single room in a new LEED-platinum dorm with a shared bathroom across the hall. She’s majoring in international business with a minor in economics, and she said that even though the Career Center provides lots of connections, she found her internship through her home base. 

The campus

Kaylie said it takes her at most 10 minutes to walk from her dorm on one end of campus to the other side of campus. She was able to show me the entire campus in a half hour. There’s a new alumni building with hotel rooms for parents to stay in. Most of the buildings are constructed from local gray limestone, giving the campus a dignified, unified look. Red accents can be found in the Adirondack chairs (empty on this frigid morning) and Dickinson College flags.

We walked to East College, where humanities are housed. A statue honors Dr. Benjamin Rush, who established the college in 1783, making Dickinson the first college in the newly formed United States of America. She showed me Stern, where global education and study abroad live, and then Old West. Dickinson students go to Old West twice–once at convocation, where they sign a book with their classmates, and once when they graduate. The broad reddish steps make the perfect spot for group pictures.

The Hub is the hub for student activities, including the dining hall that’s being renovated, a juice bar, and a snack bar. Dickinson students also favor the Denim coffee shop, just off campus. It has a nice outdoor seating area for warmer days.

Live on campus all four years

As a fully residential campus, students are required to live in campus housing all four years. First years complete a survey to be matched with a roommate. Communal bathrooms are cleaned daily. Second years enter a housing lottery and can choose roommates. Seniority gets you first dibs on the housing lottery. 

DIII sports

The Red Devils–or Big Red–play Division III sports, and their top opponent is nearby Gettysburg College. A big football game against Gettysburg awards the Little Brown Bucket to the winner, and Big Red has held onto the bucket for most of the match-ups. The Conestoga Wagon goes to the winner of the game between rivals Franklin & Marshall and Dickinson. 

First-year experience

At the beginning of orientation for freshmen, Dickinson splits the newcomers into groups of 10, making sure that no one in the group knows anyone else. Kaylie said she didn’t have any teammates in her orientation group. You spend all of a week with this group, and by the end of the week, Kaylie had formed some close friends who remained friends throughout her four years. 

You also take a seminar class early, picking from a list of topics (Kaylie’s was “Dog Is Man’s Best Friend”), and the seminar professor becomes your adviser until you pick an adviser in your major. The seminar creates a “community of inquiry” by developing critical analysis, the ability to see multiple perspectives, well-reasoned debate, and clear academic writing. 

Core curriculum

Core curriculum requirements in writing in the discipline; quantitative reasoning; distribution courses in the liberal arts; sustainability; and cross-cultural studies, which includes a language requirement. You need to take a foreign language no matter your major and to reach level 231, which would be five semesters, but you can test into placement. Regarding Kaylie’s major, her business classes have exposed her to a wide range of subgenres in business, such as accounting and marketing in a global context.

I admire Dickinson for its commitment to the liberal arts, but also its commitment to sustainability. It has been carbon neutral since 2020.

Dickinson’s distinction is really about intentional coherence–they’ve built an environment for students who want global perspective, deeply engrained sustainability, and an immersive four-year experience within a tight community.