±«Óătv

Core Curriculum

  1. Home
  2. Academics
  3. Core Curriculum

As the heart of ±«Óătv’s academic program, the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum (LACC) is a common intellectual project for the University, exposing students to diverse fields of study and modes of intellectual and creative inquiry across the curriculum and furthering ±«Óătv's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The Value of the Core

A great institution is a diverse institution. To foster deep understanding in a complex, rapidly changing world with a diversity of peoples and perspectives, this curriculum asks students and faculty to grapple with questions that shape knowledge, experience, and practice across time and space as well as across divisional and disciplinary boundaries. As a liberal arts college, ±«Óătv strives to convey to students the value of a variety of skills and a willingness to examine one’s own experience and conditions from a variety of perspectives as well as to learn of contexts different from one’s own. Through these practices, the Core encourages lifelong learning, thoughtful citizenship, and inclusivity.

Overview of the Core Curriculum

The Liberal Arts Core Curriculum (LACC) is structured around five required elements.

1. First-Year Seminars and the Living and Learning Workshop

First-year seminars (FSEMs) and the Living and Learning Workshop (LLW) are designed to introduce students to a variety of liberal arts topics, skills, and ways of learning. Each FSEM cohort connects directly with one of the living and learning communities that constitute the Residential Commons program. The LLW aims to educate the whole student and to build an inclusive community with well-adjusted and socially aware students.

2. Liberal Arts Core Components

The three components encourage students to call assumptions into question, to push beyond the limits of their experience, and to examine structures and systems in which we operate.

Core Communities

These multidisciplinary courses examine the patterns of inclusion and exclusion shaped by global phenomena (capitalism, colonialism, political ideologies, religions, and new technologies among many others) to better understand what it means to live in community.

Sample Communities Courses

Core Conversations

This course employs a set of five common texts to promote wide-ranging conversations, anchored in the past and directed toward the present. Core Conversations defines the term “text” expansively, not limiting it to written work but encompassing many modes of intellectual and creative expression from different cultures and time periods, including the distant past.

Core Sciences

These courses investigate the scientific process and the relationship between science and society while engaging with the histories, inequities, or social differences that can be and have been associated with science.