51С»Æ³µ the Core Curriculum
As an undergraduate in UNE’s College of Arts and Sciences, you benefit from an innovative common learning experience known as the Core Curriculum. The courses and events comprising the Core help you explore four different themes—one during each undergraduate year—from the perspectives of multiple disciplines.
Through this work you gain a foundation in the liberal arts that prepares you for the complex challenges of our modern world. You also gain essential skills of critical thinking and communications that will help you achieve your educational goals no matter your field of study.
First Year: Environmental Awareness
You examine the relationships between humans and the environment from historical, economic, scientific, aesthetic, and ethical perspectives. Along the way, you come to understand the extent to which we all belong to various ecosystems that have interdependent cycles involving other organisms, air, water, chemicals, and energy.
Second Year: Social and Global Awareness
You analyze human experience through the lenses of the humanities, studying the rise and fall of civilizations, works of art and literature, and the philosophical, religious and economic ideas that have shaped our world. You learn to use methods of social and behavioral science to interpret human interactions in cultural, societal, national and global contexts.
Third Year: Critical Thinking — Human Responses to Problems and Challenges
You think critically and creatively about the very challenges professionals face today in your primary field of study. Centering on the thinking process as well as on the issues, you research and identify the causes of specific problems, you generate and evaluate possible solutions, and you plot different courses of potential action.
Fourth Year: Citizenship and Civic Engagement
You contemplate the balance between making a living and making a life, and learn how to positively affect the world, your community and your profession. After completing an interdisciplinary seminar and accompanying community service project or civic activity, you emerge ready to embrace the responsibilities we share as members of larger societies.