A general education program for the 21st century citizen
Cardinal Core Curriculum
The Cardinal Core Curriculum provides students with a rigorous and robust general education experience as an essential component of the baccalaureate degree. The program is designed to allow students to explore a wide range of topics and ways of thinking in preparation for life as a 21st century citizen.
The Foundation
Students are introduced to the Cardinal Core Curriculum in classes in The Foundation, where they explore their roles and identities in a pluralistic society. In their first year, students complete courses in fundamental communication, research skills, and the Cardinal Core Foundation Seminar — an academically rigorous, skill-building, topically-based seminar. The Foundation also includes supportive courses to achieve college-level competencies in mathematics and written communication.
Core Categories
There are six core categories in the Cardinal Core Curriculum, reflecting a diversity of core knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences. Core skills of communication, critical thinking, discovery and inquiry, and quantitative reasoning are integrated throughout, with focus on the core perspectives of global awareness, individual development and social justice.
- Human Communities: Courses in this area promote a critical self-awareness of individuals’ roles and
responsibilities within communities by examining how people interact with each other
and in groups.
- Individual Expression: Courses in this area encourage students to reflect on their roles within a diverse
society through exploration of the multiple ways we reason, engage with, document,
and creatively represent or express the range of human experience.
- Natural World: Courses in this area explore the scientific concepts, models and methods necessary
to study natural phenomena that affect the global community.
- Quantitative Reasoning: Courses in this area develop and utilize quantitative skills to address practical
problems in order to better understand the world.
- U.S. Identities: Courses in this area explore communities, histories, and institutions within the
United States to engage students in critical examination of their roles in American
society.
- World Cultures: Courses in this area explore communities, histories, and institutions outside the United States to engage students in critical examination of their roles in a global society