CHICAGO — Thirteen students lie in a circle and stretch. They make monkey sounds to warm up their voices. Then they practice being funny.

"A ship," the instructor says. "The Mayflower." The students spring into action, morphing into the shape of a ship, one holding out her arms like a maiden figurehead on the bow and two rowing in the galley.

It is hardly a normal college classroom.

A new program at Columbia College Chicago allows students to take classes at The Second City, the humor Mecca that has turned out some of America's best-known improvisational comedians. Students also attend shows, network with artists and present their work in a showcase — all for college credit.

For aspiring performer Jennifer Ducharme, studying at The Second City "is exactly what I was looking for."

"I really wanted to get into comedy, especially improv; it's really what I need right now," said Ducharme, 20, a theater arts major at Boston University who took a leave of absence to spend the semester in Chicago.

It's new territory for The Second City, where actors usually come to learn improvisation on the job. Among those who developed their funny bones there are the late Chris Farley and Gilda Radner — both of whom became fixtures on "Saturday Night Live" — and Steve Carell, star of "The Office."

Columbia and Second City officials have lofty goals for their collaboration, which they hope becomes the "Juilliard of comedy," said Anne Libera, executive artistic director of The Second City training center.

"We would have died to have been in a program that had all those things; it's the education that all of us wanted to have," said Libera, who was in a theater company that included Stephen Colbert, host of the satirical news program "The Colbert Report."

"There's nothing else like it in the country. It's going to be big — it's going to be very big," said Sheldon Patinkin, chair of Columbia College Chicago's theater department and one of the founding members of what was first the Playwrights Theatre Club, then The Compass Players and, finally, The Second City.

The idea for the program came about more than two years ago, when Andrew Alexander, Second City's executive producer and a member of Columbia College Chicago's board of trustees, had lunch with Patinkin and college president Warrick Carter.

During the lunch, Alexander mentioned that a college in Toronto had a program that included courses in improv, Patinkin said.

"I immediately said, `Oh, what a great idea, let's do that with Second City,"' Patinkin recalled. "It was a mutual thing, we all wanted to do it."

Students take a full load of six classes, including "Context for Comedy," "History and Analysis of Comedy" and "Creating Scenes Through Improvisation."

While the training is as intense as other college programs, so is the cost. Tuition is $8,164, for the semester, plus an additional $230 for student fees. Students from out of town also must find their own housing.