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Shimer College - Chicago, IL (IIT campus, near south side)
Other Great Books colleges include Shimer College, "The Great Books college of the Midwest." Founded in 1853 by Frances Wood Shimer, it was originally a non-denominational seminary, and at one time was connected to the University of Chicago. In the early 1950's, Shimer adopted the Hutchins Plan (originally a plan to change the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Chicago, which only lasted about 15 years).
Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977), one of the presidents at the U. of Chic., and Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001), author of How To Read A Book, produced the Great Books of the Western World (Encyclopedia Brittanica, c. 1952), and its index, The Syntopicon. The 54-volume set starts with The Great Conversation, which explains the goals of a liberal arts education and the need to read the original texts.
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