Santa Clara University

Foundations courses, normally taken during the first year, introduce students to university learning. Integrated courses trace relationships among ideas, cultures, and traditions.  Small classes, some linked with the Residential Learning Communities, create mentoring relationships with professors, build communities among students, and promote intentional, reflective learning. An emphasis on the relationships among global cultures, including the west, provides students with an opportunity to reflect on diverse as well as shared human experiences across historical periods. And an emphasis on the knowledge and skills central to liberal education—writing, language, culture, mathematics and religion—provides a shared intellectual foundation, challenging students to sharpen the reflective and analytic skills they will need in whatever paths they choose.

• Critical Thinking and Writing (2 courses)
• Cultures and Ideas (2 courses)
• Second Language
• Mathematics
• Religion, Theology, and Culture (1 of 3 courses)