General Education Program

The College's General Education program, required of all students, aims to foster intellectual breadth, critical thinking, and acquisition of the fundamental skills and habits of mind conducive to lifelong inquiry, engaged citizenship, and personal growth.

Freshmen may enroll in one of several fall semester seminars designed to ensure close student-faculty relationships, intensive examination of a topic of deep substantive import, instruction in writing and critical reading and analysis, and active class discussion. A list of the freshman seminars offered is published each academic year.

Students are required to complete a series of at least seven courses designed to ensure broad engagement with the range of disciplines that constitute the liberal arts. These courses introduce students to the orienting questions, conceptual frameworks, and methods of inquiry and expression of the natural and social sciences, humanities, and arts.

Students must complete one course from each of the seven Areas, taken in seven different departments. Two-credit courses do not satisfy any area requirement. The courses normally are to be completed by the end of the sophomore year.

Any student who is placed by the instructor or the department in a course for which the prerequisite meets a general education requirement in a given area shall be deemed to have fulfilled that area requirement upon satisfactory completion of the course.

See General Education Requirements.

Last Modified: Thursday, December 20, 2007 13:30