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Core Curriculum The Core Curriculum provides an innovative common learning experience for all UNE undergraduates. It invites students to explore four college-wide themes from multiple disciplinary perspectives and to develop important intellectual skills. Students focus on a theme each year - (1) Environmental Awareness, (2) Social and Global Awareness, (3) Critical Thinking: Human Responses to Problems and Challenges, and (4) Citizenship. Skills of communications, mathematics, and critical thinking are taught throughout the core. Designed to provide a foundation in the liberal arts, the core reflects the values of the college and is designed to prepare students for living informed, thoughtful, and active lives in a complex and changing society. Environmental Awareness is the first-year theme. All entering students enroll in Introduction to Environmental Issues and a laboratory science course. Students discover science as a process and discuss the role of science and technology in society. The laboratory science course will serve to introduce the scientific method as an approach to knowledge and infuse and include as a significant consideration issues pertaining to Environmental Awareness. As part of the first-year experience students will enroll in one Humanities Exploration course and a subsequent Humanities or Social/Behavioral Sciences Exploration course. These foster student inquiry into engaging academic topics. Each course, while connecting to one or more of the common core themes, introduces the intellectual tools of the discipline, thereby encouraging students to understand the liberal arts as distinctive ways of understanding. All exploration courses promote writing as a tool of learning and teach critical thinking skills explicitly. The second-year theme, Social and Global Awareness, focuses attention on the human experience by means of two year-long courses - Sociocultural Context of Human Development and Human Traditions. A Social/Global Awareness (SGA) course may be taken as an alternative to Sociocultural Context of Human Development I or II or both. Sociocultural Context of Human Development invites students to explore the human lifespan in cultural, societal, national, and global contexts. In this sequence, students use perspectives and methods of the social and behavioral sciences to examine human interaction and growth. In the Human Traditions courses, they analyze human experience within the traditions of the humanities. Students inquire into the rise and fall of civilizations, study works of art and literature, and examine the philosophical, religious, and economic ideas that shaped ancient cultures and the modern world. The third-year theme, Critical Thinking: Human Responses to Problems and Challenges, builds upon and develops the knowledge and skills students have mastered in their first two years while it teaches students to deal with the complex problems and issues they confront in their upper-level major courses. Each program requires its majors to enroll in Case Studies in Decision Making and Problem Solving where students and faculty engage in informed critical and creative thinking about problems confronting professionals in that field. Centering on the thinking process, as well as on the issues, students research and identify causes of problems, generate and evaluate possible solutions, and decide upon a plan of action. The fourth-year theme, Citizenship, prepares students to make a difference in the world, their communities, and their professions. Students will enroll in an interdisciplinary seminar and participate in community service or civic activity. During their seminar students discuss the personal and public responsibilities they anticipate and share their concerns for the world they are about to enter. This theme challenges students to understand the balance between making a living and making a life. Activities provide the opportunity to weave together various threads of the core and the major. Advanced humanities courses, taken in the third and fourth year, develop the diverse humanistic perspectives introduced in the Exploration and Human Tradition courses. They encourage students to deal with the complexities of disciplinary perspectives, competing theoretical positions, and complicated content. Students select courses from a desire to learn more about a given discipline and from a wish to study further with a particular faculty member. Humanities Integration and Infusion may be offered in a major and may substitute for one of the advanced humanities. In these courses humanities faculty help students apply the perspectives of the humanities to professional material. The goal of infusion is to encourage students to have a broad, complex, and integrative perspective on their fields. Once during their academic careers, students participate in a "creative arts experience" by taking a course or by completing an independent project. This requirement emphasizes the value of their creative spirits and uncovers gifts that will sustain students throughout their lives. Cross-Curricular Instruction The intellectual skills and an additional college theme are reinforced throughout the core and appear repeatedly in the curriculum.
The core curriculum emphasizes active, collaborative, and experiential learning. It challenges students to transfer knowledge from one arena to another, appreciate different disciplinary perspectives on the same topic, and integrate what they have learned to construct their own knowledge. The curriculum provides an interwoven and reinforced set of experiences in core courses, in major or professional requirements, in special all-campus events, and in general college life. A more thorough description of the core is available through the CAS Dean's Office.
Notice and Responsibilities Regarding this Catalog The University of New England reserves the right in its sole judgment to make changes of any nature in its programs, calendar, or academic schedule whenever it is deemed necessary or desirable, including changes in course content, the rescheduling of classes with or without extending the academic term, canceling of scheduled classes or other academic activities, in any such case giving such notice thereof as is reasonably practicable under the circumstances. While each student may work closely with an academic advisor, he or she must retain individual responsibility for meeting requirements in this catalog and for being aware of any changes in provisions or requirements. Back to Top |
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Copyright © 2004 University of New England
Send comments and questions about this site to the UNE Webmaster.
Copyright © 2004 University of New England