A successful academic program involves a partner ship between strong majors and a comprehensive general education program. Students are involved not only in their respective fields of study, but are also broadly integrated into the College’s General Education program.

The heart of the College’s academic program is the General Education curriculum that continues throughout the four years of a student’s course of study. It begins with a two-course first-year sequence: Human Experience (HE) and a First-Year Experience (FYE) Seminar. In their sophomore and junior years, students take one course from each of the four classic liberal arts academic areas of the Natural Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts. To recognize the importance of global and diversity issues as well as the challenges humans face in environmental sustainability, students also take a Global Perspective course and an Environmental Perspective course. Finally, in the senior year each student completes the Imagining Justice course, which focuses on constructive responses to some of the critical issues of our time.

The General Education program has the following goals:

• Integrative Knowledge and the Big Questions

• Critical Thinking

• Values Identification

• Written and Oral Communication

• Global Understanding

• Environmental Awareness

• Quantitative Literacy

• Meaningful Academic Breadth

These goals are supported through the General Education program requirements, which include reflective service learning, writing intensive courses, world language proficiency, and academic area perspective courses, in addition to the core courses.