Santa Clara University

THE SANTA CLARA CORE CURRICULUM

A university expresses its most basic values in its core curriculum, the part of an undergraduate education required of all students. Santa Clara University is implementing a new Core Curriculum in 2009, building on the strengths of the former Core Curriculum. Santa Clara’s new Core Curriculum explicitly integrates three traditions of higher education. As a Catholic university, Santa Clara is rooted in the tradition of pursuing an understanding of God through the free exercise of reason. As a Jesuit university, Santa Clara promotes a humanistic education that leads toward an ethical engagement with the world. As a comprehensive American university committed to liberal education, Santa Clara seeks to prepare its students for intelligent, responsible, and creative citizenship.

Reflecting these three traditions, the Core Curriculum provides every undergraduate with the common learning that all students need to become leaders of competence, conscience, and compassion.

The distinctiveness of a Santa Clara education emerges in the Core Curriculum, both in its sense of purpose rooted in the University’s traditions and in its commitment to a breadth of learning that complements and supports all majors. The Core Curriculum opens students to the study and practice of the arts, humanities, mathematics, technology, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. It educates students for an ethically informed participation in civic life, employing experiential learning to form compassionate women and men attentive to human suffering. Reflecting the University’s founding mission, the Core Curriculum includes a disciplined and critical reflection on the religious dimensions of human existence. In addition, because the Core Curriculum continually highlights the critical and compelling questions facing individuals and communities, the Core Curriculum supports students not only in making professional career choices but also in discerning their larger vocation—their life’s purpose in the world.

Learning Goals: What will students learn in the Core Curriculum?

Because a liberal education in the Jesuit tradition is oriented toward particular ends, the Core Curriculum affirms a set of central learning goals. These goals are divided among three broad categories—Knowledge, Habits of Mind and Heart, and Engagement with the World.

Knowledge

To be prepared for well-informed engagement in society, students must comprehend the forces that have shaped the world they have inherited and the ways the world is interpreted and understood. They must also understand how they might transform the world for the better. The Core Curriculum deepens the students’ knowledge of the most profound ideas and ways of knowing that emerge from the arts, humanities, and natural and social sciences.

Habits of Mind and Heart

To contribute to a rapidly changing, complex, and interdependent world, students must develop ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that allow them to educate themselves for the rest of their lives with passion and purpose. By attending to the cognitive and affective dimensions of human experience, the Core Curriculum enables students to think more deeply, imagine more freely, and communicate more clearly.

Engagement with the World

To engage with the world in meaningful ways, students need opportunities to explore and refine self-knowledge in relation to others. The Core Curriculum enhances students’ understanding of the integrity of their own lives and the dignity inherent in the lives of others, especially the impoverished, suffering, and marginalized.

The goals within each broad category are listed in the table below.

Student Learning Goals in the Core Curriculum

Each course in the Core Curriculum addresses at least three of these learning goals. Students have multiple opportunities to encounter, practice, and master each learning goal. Specific learning objectives for each area of the Core Curriculum have been developed by faculty Core Curriculum committees. These learning objectives describe the knowledge, skills, and values students will be able to demonstrate after completing the courses in the Core Curriculum. The learning objectives are posted on the Core Curriculum Web site.

The Curriculum: What courses will students take in the Core Curriculum?

The Core Curriculum consists of two phases of coursework designed to foster developmental learning and curricular coherence. The first phase, Foundations, consists of courses normally taken in the first year that introduce students to the process and expectations for university-level education: Cultures and Ideas, Critical Thinking and Writing, Mathematics, a second language, and the first course in Religion, Theology, and Culture. This phase helps students begin to set their own goals for learning, preparing them to make thoughtful choices in the Core Curriculum, their majors, and co-curricular activities.

The second phase, Explorations, includes courses that expand students’ understanding of a broad range of knowledge and abilities needed for effective participation in contemporary life. These courses include Ethics, Civic Engagement, Diversity, the Arts, Natural Science (with lab), Social Science, a third Cultures and Ideas class with a global focus, a course in Science, Technology, and Society, and two additional courses in Religion, Theology, and Culture. Some Explorations courses have prerequisites or must be taken in specific sequences.

The Core Curriculum also includes Integrations that help students make connections among courses in the core curriculum and between the Core Curriculum and the major. Integrations are not additional courses. Rather, they are components of other courses. One Integrations course includes an experiential learning element oriented toward issues of justice. One course involves an advanced writing component. Students also link a set of Core Curriculum, major, or elective courses into an interdisciplinary Pathway. The Pathways foster integrative, intentional learning, providing opportunities for undergraduate research, complementing the majors, and encouraging the application of knowledge in the world.

Pathways focus on any one of a wide range of themes including Sustainability; Democracy; Vocation; American Studies; Food, Hunger and Poverty; Justice and the Arts; Race, Place and Social Inequalities; Gender, Sexuality and the Body; and Global Health.

Checklist of Core Curriculum Courses

• Some courses have prerequisites or must be taken in specific sequences. See the Core Curriculum Web site.
• Integrations courses can fulfill more than one set of requirements in a single course.
• Most Core Curriculum courses, with a few exceptions, are 4- or 5-unit courses.
• Learning objectives for each area of the Core Curriculum are posted on the Core Curriculum Web site.

The Core Curriculum and the College of Arts and Sciences

Students in the College of Arts and Sciences should consult Chapter 3 for the requirements for their majors. There are no additional college-wide requirements beyond the requirements for the University Core Curriculum.

The Core Curriculum and the Leavey School of Business

Leavey School of Business requirements determine how students in the business school satisfy some University Core Curriculum requirements. Some Core Curriculum requirements must be fulfilled with specific courses. Students in the Leavey School of Business should consult Chapter 4 for the complete list of requirements for the majors and the school.

Checklist of Courses for Students in the Leavey School of Business: University Core Curriculum and Business School Core Curriculum

The Core Curriculum and the School of Engineering

School of Engineering requirements determine how students satisfy some University Core Curriculum requirements. Some Core Curriculum requirements must be fulfilled with specific courses or sets of courses. Students in the School of Engineering should consult Chapter 5 for the complete list of requirements for their majors and the school.

Checklist of Core Curriculum Courses for Students in the School of Engineering

For students in the School of Engineering, some Foundations and Explorations courses fulfill two sets of requirements in a single course.

The Core Curriculum and Transfer Students

Transfer students entering the University in fall 2009 follow the Core Curriculum described in the 2008-09 Undergraduate Bulletin. Transfer students entering the University in fall 2010 or later will normally follow the Core Curriculum described above. Students who transfer to Santa Clara University should consult Chapters 7 and 8 as well as the chapters relevant to their school or college. Students matriculating with 44 or more units of transferable college credit take any two Religion, Theology, and Culture courses.