The Santa Clara Core Curriculum
Community and Leadership for a Global Society
A university expresses its most basic values in its core curriculum, that
part of an undergraduate education required of all students. The Santa Clara
Core Curriculum, adopted in fall 1996 after four years of University-wide discussion,
combines traditional core strengths with a new emphasis on curricular integration,
world cultures, and technology. It stems from the University Statement of Purpose
and the University Goals adopted in October 1993. Goal Number Four states: �To
be a learning environment that integrates rigorous inquiry, creative imagination,
reflective engagement with society, and a commitment to fashioning a more humane
and just world.�
Within this governing framework, Santa Clara University encourages all its
members to participate in the pursuit of truth and the common good. The University
emphasizes the Catholic and Jesuit traditions of spirituality, intellectual
excellence, study of Western and world cultures, internationalism, the promotion
of faith and justice, and leadership as service to others. The University Core
Curriculum seeks to further these values by fostering the strengths of a liberal
education, including religious studies and ethics.
Community
University Goal Number Six is �Nurture a diverse University community rooted
in mutual understanding and respect.�
Accordingly, the Core seeks to create a University learning environment in
which diverse perspectives interact to enliven, enrich, and broaden one another.
This University environment is intended to model and to foster lifelong collaborative
learning as service to the broader civic community. The University Core Curriculum
aims at the active engagement of Santa Clara University graduates in the building
of strong and diverse communities.
Leadership
University Goal Number One is �Educate for leadership in the Jesuit tradition.�
In the Jesuit tradition, competence, conscience, and compassion are integrally
linked. In this context, leadership fuses thought, feeling, and action in the
service of values and purposes that support and promote the common good. We
encourage that type of leadership among students, as a vocation both within
and beyond the University.
We seek to foster self-knowledge, as well as self-confidence and initiative,
so that students may articulate their own ideas and inspire others toward a
commitment to create a sustainable, humane, and just world.
Global Society
The University Statement of Purpose calls for �educational programs designed
to provide breadth and depth� and �the integration of different forms of knowledge.�
In the context of the rapid internationalization of contemporary life, swift
technological change, and religious, philosophical, and cultural pluralism,
citizens must be able to work in diverse groups. Furthermore, many problems
transcend the expertise of a single specialist. We seek to educate students
who will be able to address issues within their multidisciplinary and global
context.
The Santa Clara Core: Themes and Requirements
The Santa Clara Core Curriculum expresses the University�s strongest values
in an integrated whole. It is hoped students will not just experience Core requirements
as individual courses but as related educational experiences that help structure
the students� whole University study. The Santa Clara Core Curriculum is a series
of three themes and clusters that explore those themes.
The progression of those themes is not strictly chronological, nor will all
students study Core courses in exactly the same sequence. They will, however,
study the same courses based upon the same sets of criteria for inclusion in
the Core. The Santa Clara Core Curriculum expresses the psychological dynamics
of focusing on one�s own identity �within the community� (Who am I?), �moving
out� to encounter new realities (What is the world like?), and then �returning
to oneself� to integrate these new realities into one�s worldview as a basis
for leading others (What is my relationship to the world? How should I act?).
All of these stages, of course, take place every day for all learners. Thus,
while each cluster has a primary theme, all three themes ought ultimately to
find expression in each cluster. Senior Capstones, departmental majors and minors,
and University interdepartmental programs are other important ways of assisting
students to integrate their complete University experience.
First Theme: Community: A sense of person and place
English Composition (2)
Religious Studies (first course)
United States
Western Culture (2)
Second theme: Global Societies: Methods of inquiry, interaction, and analysis
Mathematics
Social Science
Natural Science
Second Language
Technology
World Cultures/Societies
Third Theme: Leadership: Integration and perspective
Ethics
Religious Studies (second and third courses)
Third Writing Course
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