Degree Requirements: Class of 2010 and Later

Go to the chart of this curriculum.

Curriculum comes from the Latin for course, in the sense in which one might speak of the course of a river or a pathway. The curriculum, like degree requirements, is a means and not an end, but it suggests better than degree requirements do what it is to become educated.  It denotes a movement from some starting point to a destination, and it’s a movement that proceeds along some course or route. You are not left to your own devices to figure out how to get from here to there.  But neither is the path straight and narrow. You might think instead of a network of paths. You can explore as many as you care to. Many alternative paths can be taken to gain a good understanding of the lay of the land. You do not have to travel every route to see every point along the way. The curriculum is a means and not an end, a path and not the destination.

The College’s curriculum draws you toward two distinctive goals: toward general education across the wide range of the arts and sciences and toward specialized education in a major. A commitment to holding these two—general and specialized education—together has been the genius of American higher education since the early part of the last century. We continue to believe that these two elements constitute an education best suited to enabling intelligent people to live fulfilling and productive lives in the 21st century.

The General Education Curriculum

The College's General Education Curriculum has two broad objectives. It seeks to educate you in some general skills or approaches to knowledge and to engage you in the intellectual work of the disciplines in a variety of fields across the arts and sciences.

In following this curriculum, you will be guided by two kinds of degree requirements corresponding to these two objectives. One deals with foundational approaches, the other with specific disciplines and fields of knowledge. Within any given course, these two—an approach and a field of study—are integral to one another. An approach is learned by practice in relation to a field of knowledge: your ability to use a foreign language is developed through learning about the culture in which the language is rooted; understanding a work of art is acquired by learning how to write about it—that is, by learning how to use words to describe, compare, question and argue about works of art and the contexts in which they are created and appreciated; you learn how to analyze quantitative data by thinking about what data mean for our knowledge of phenomena in the real world. Some courses, however, give priority to developing skills and approaches, while others give priority to the field under investigation.

Foundational Approaches
The Foundational Approaches are key intellectual capabilities demanded in a variety of disciplines.

The Sectors
The sectors are intended to ensure breadth of education across the sectors or fields of knowledge, along with interdisciplinary explorations that link several fields of knowledge.

The Major
The Major provides an opportunity to know a segment of human knowledge deeply, with a sufficient grasp of its modes of thinking and analysis to make your own contribution.

Free Electives

In addition to these structural elements, the curriculum provides space in your studies for a number of Free Electives.  These give you the freedom to pursue interests that may lie outside your major and that extend beyond those addressed in the General Education curriculum. Take a course in a field that you have not otherwise encountered. Use one or more Free Electives to explore further a subject introduced in a sector course.  Or learn about a subject that sheds light on your major.