RPI to drop Arch summer semester requirement for Class of 2028 students and beyond

RPI will no longer require students to do the Arch summer semester. The change was announced by the Student Government through an Instagram post on October 12. The Center for Career and Professional Development has yet to formally announce the change, but they have updated The Arch’s “About” page with the new information.

Starting with the Class of 2028, or any student with Sophomore status, students will be able to fulfill their Arch requirements by taking two courses, ADMN-1030 and ILEA-4400. ADMN-1030, formerly the 0-credit Arch planning course, will now be a career development course which can be taken at any time. ILEA-4400, the 0-credit course students were enrolled in during their Arch away semester, will now become the “Arch Experience” course. Students can fulfill this requirement by participating in an internship, co-op, self-design, civic engagement, study abroad, or undergraduate research during any semester. A summer internship will also satisfy this requirement. Students will need to obtain a grade of Satisfactory (S) in both courses to graduate.

Any student that has earned at least 30 credits can take the experience semester and would be required to complete 260 hours of work over the course of the semester. Students will also have the option to take classes and do their experience at the same time. In other words, a student could take 16 credits of classes and do 260 hours of research, or an internship, in the same semester. Additionally, the research option can be paid, for credit, or a volunteer experience. Taking classes and doing an experience at the same time will require approval from both a student’s academic advisor and the Office of Financial Aid.

The Arch program will also undergo a significant rebranding. The Arch Task Force will send out a survey in the next few weeks seeking input from students for new names for the program. The changes to the program, including its new name, will formally go into effect in January 2026.

Dropping the summer semester requirement is one the most significant changes to the Arch program since its inception. The program was first announced in 2015 by then-President Shirley Ann Jackson. In its original form, the program saw students taking classes during the summer following their Sophomore year. During their Junior year, students would spend the Fall or Spring semester away working. In 2017 and 2018, two optional pilot summer semesters were held followed by the first required summer semester in 2019. Student feedback following that mandatory semester was extremely negative. A survey run by the Student Senate following the semester found that 78 percent of respondents were unsatisfied with the Arch. 64 percent said that they would not participate in Arch if it was optional.

In a Town Meeting in October 2019, President Jackson said she would not consider making Arch optional. During an interview with President Martin A. Schmidt ’81 a few months after he became president, he said he would work to resolve many of the pain points students had with the program. In a 2024 interview, Schmidt said he would not make the program optional.

The Polytechnic was provided an Arch Task Force slideshow presentation that outlined many of the changes to the program. At the end of the presentation, there is a quote from Assistant Vice Provost for Experiential Learning and Professional Development Philip Bruce which says, “The Arch Program is like a phoenix, being reborn.”

Editor's Note: This article was last updated on October 20.