Which colleges and universities have unique, distinctive core curricula?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>The standard approach to a core tends to be rather dull - specify five or six areas of inquiry and require X number of courses in each. That often encourages a "checklist" mentality of crossing off each "hoop" after one has jumped through it. Those cores, to some students, seem to be necessary evils to be tolerated on the way to something more exciting.</p>

<p>But some colleges have unique approaches to their general ed or core curriculum. At Evergreen State, students enroll in a single, comprehensive "program" rather than a series of separate courses and explore many aspects of a theme or topic through different but related academic subjects. Some schools have options to convert a three-hour course to four hours by adding research, practicum experiences or service learning.</p>

<p>What institutions do you know to have distinctive core curricula about which their prospective students might actually get excited?</p>

2

<p>I was always intrigued by the “block plan” that Colorado College and Cornell College follow where you take one course at a time and focus on that subject for 3 weeks. If a student is very intense and focused, I think the block plan is a great idea. However, if there are time management issues, it might be hard to keep up.</p>

<p>I also liked the curriculum at the University of Rochester where there are no basic core requirements but you need to select classes ina variety of different themes.</p>

3

<p>Columbia, University of Chicago, St. John’s (Annapolis) and Deep Springs</p>

4

<p>Every Reed freshman and transfer takes the year-long Humanities 110; the 2009-10 fall and spring reading lists (will change to a larger world view for 2010-11):</p>

<p>Aeschylus, The Oresteia, trans. Fagles (Penguin)
Aristophanes, Three Comedies: The Birds, The Clouds, The Wasps, ed. Arrowsmith (Chicago)
Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Irwin (Hackett)
Curd, ed., Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia, trans. McKirahan (Hackett)
Euripides, Euripides V: Electra, The Phoenician Women, The Bacchae, ed. Grene and Lattimore (Chicago)
Harvey, The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing (Hackett)
Herodotus, The History, trans. Selincourt (Penguin)
Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, and Shield, trans. Lombardo (Hackett)
Homer, The Iliad, trans. Lattimore (Chicago)
Martin, Ancient Greece From Pre-Historic to Hellenistic Times (Yale)
Miller, Greek Lyric: An Anthology in Translation (Hackett)
Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates, trans. Grube (Hackett)
Plato, Republic, trans. Reeve (Hackett)
Sophocles, Sophocles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, ed. Grene and Lattimore (Chicago)
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian Wars, trans. Warner (Penguin)
Various Readings on Ancient Greece available on e-reserves</p>

<p>Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Indiana Univ. Press)
Athanasius, Life of St. Antony the Great (Eastern Orthodox)
Augustine, Confessions (Oxford World Classics)
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha/ New Revised Standard Version: College Edition (Oxford Univ. Press)
Brown, World of Late Antiquity (W. W. Norton)
Garnsey, Peter & Richard Saller. The Roman Empire: Economy, Society & Culture (UCB Press)
Jaffee, Early Judaism (Univ. Press of Maryland)
Josephus, The Jewish War (Penguin USA)
Livy, The Rise of Rome, Books 1-5 (Oxford World Classics)
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (Focus Philosophical Library)
Martin, Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times (Yale Univ. Press)
Ovid, Metamorphoses (Oxford World Classics)
Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca (W. W. Norton)
Tacitus, The Agricola and the Germania (Penguin USA)W
Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome (Penguin USA)
Virgil, The Aeneid (Bantam Doubleday Dell)
Various texts are also on e-reserves</p>

5

<p>Not the whole “core” so to speak, but:</p>

<p>Lawrence University has a mandatory 2 quarter sequence that is a mini-great books program.</p>

<p>St. Olaf has several optional “Conversations” programs that tie together 3–5 courses into a coherent core that satisfies significantly more than 3–5 core requirements. One interesting thing about the St. Olaf Conversations programs is that you are also with the same cohort of students for the entire time.</p>

6

<p>Perhaps the Caltech core?</p>

<p>[Caltech</a> Undergraduate Admissions: Core Curriculum](<a href=“http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/learning/core]Caltech”>http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/learning/core)</p>

7

<p>i personally love brown’s core curriculum</p>

<p>1 semester of nothing
2 semesters of blank space
a year long course titled “________”</p>

8

<p>Do Reed frosh take anything BESIDES 110? Is that a list for just two 3-hour classes?!</p>

9

<p>Reed frosh take three (or sometimes four) courses per semester; 110 is one of them in fall and spring; it’s three lectures plus one conference per week.</p>

10

<p>“St. Olaf has several optional “Conversations” programs that tie together 3–5 courses into a coherent core that satisfies significantly more than 3–5 core requirements. One interesting thing about the St. Olaf Conversations programs is that you are also with the same cohort of students for the entire time”</p>

<p>I forgot about the Great Conversations program at St Olaf, nice catch.</p>

11

<p>Providence College’s mandatory Development of Western Civilization is pretty great. 20 credits - meets daily for 2 years. Team taught - philosophy, literature, history, theology, art history - emphasis on reading source materials. I took it 30 years ago (hard to believe)and still remember much of what was taught. From what I understand its fundamentally the same.</p>

<p>There are additional requirements in social sciences, natural science, math, theology, philosophy, fine arts and electives outside of your major. Overall, every student has the opportunity to obtain a very well rounded liberal arts eduction in addition to whatever major they chose.</p>

12

<p>To noimagination, all engineering schools have a core composed of math, physics, and chem.</p>

13

<p>URochester. No required classes! (except for a freshman writing course)</p>

14

<p>Shimmer College, St. John’s (Annapolis/Santa Fe), and Thomas Aquinas (CA) all have interesting core “great books” programs.</p>