Shimer College in the context of "Mount Carroll, Illinois"

The stakeholder theory is a theory of organizational management and business ethics that accounts for multiple constituencies impacted by business entities like employees, suppliers, local communities, creditors, and others. It addresses morals and values in managing an organization, such as those related to corporate social responsibility, market economy, and social contract theory.

The stakeholder view of strategy integrates a resource-based view and a market-based view, and adds a socio-political level. One common version of stakeholder theory seeks to define the specific stakeholders of a company (the normative theory of stakeholder identification) and then examine the conditions under which managers treat these parties as stakeholders (the descriptive theory of stakeholder salience).

Consensus decision-making is a group decision-making process in which participants work together to develop proposals for actions that achieve a broad acceptance. Consensus is reached when everyone in the group assents to a decision (or almost everyone; see stand aside) even if some do not fully agree to or support all aspects of it. It differs from simple unanimity, which requires all participants to support a decision. Consensus decision-making in a democracy is consensus democracy.

Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. In addition to education, student groups often play central roles in democratization and winning civil rights.

Modern student activist movements span all ages, races, socio-economic backgrounds, and political perspectives. Some student protests focus on the internal affairs of an institution (like disinvestment); others tackle wars or dictatorships. Student activism is most often associated with left-wing politics.

Student voice is the individual and collective perspective and actions of students within the context of learning and education. It is identified in schools as both a metaphorical practice and as a pragmatic concern. Tech educator Dennis Harper noted that student voice gives students "the ability to influence learning to include policies, programs, contexts and principles."

Robert Maynard Hutchins (January 17, 1899 – May 14, 1977) was an American educational philosopher. He was the 5th president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago, and earlier dean of Yale Law School (1927–1929). His first wife was the novelist Maude Hutchins. Although his father and grandfather were both Presbyterian ministers, Hutchins became one of the most influential members of the school of secular perennialism.

A graduate of Yale College and the law school of Yale University, Hutchins joined the law faculty and soon was named dean. While dean, he gained notice for Yale's development of the philosophy of legal realism. Hutchins was thirty years old when he became Chicago's president in 1929, and implemented wide-ranging and sometimes controversial reforms of the university, including the elimination of varsity football. He supported interdisciplinary programs, including during World War II, establishing the Metallurgical Laboratory. His most far-reaching academic reforms involved the undergraduate College of the University of Chicago, which was retooled into a novel pedagogical system built on Great Books, Socratic dialogue, comprehensive examinations and early entrance to college. Although parts of the Hutchins Plan were abandoned by the University shortly after Hutchins left in 1951, an adapted version of the program survived at Shimer College.

Experiential learning (ExL) is the process of learning through experience, and is more narrowly defined as "learning through reflection on doing". Hands-on learning can be a form of experiential learning, but does not necessarily involve students reflecting on their product. Experiential learning is distinct from rote or didactic learning, in which the learner plays a comparatively passive role. It is related to, but not synonymous with, other forms of active learning such as action learning, adventure learning, free-choice learning, cooperative learning, service-learning, and situated learning.

Experiential learning is often used synonymously with the term "experiential education", but while experiential education is a broader philosophy of education, experiential learning considers the individual learning process. As such, compared to experiential education, experiential learning is concerned with more concrete issues related to the learner and the learning context. Experiences "stick out" in the mind and assist with information retention.

Democratic education is a type of formal education that is organized democratically, so that students can manage their own learning and participate in the governance of their educational environment. Democratic education is often specifically emancipatory, with the students' voices being equal to the teachers'.

Democratic education must be distinguished from civic education. Although there are overlaps, civic education is concerned with the study of the theoretical, political, and practical aspects of (democratic) citizenship, as well as its rights and duties, while democratic education presupposes that the educational setting is organized democratically.