As Director of the Core Curriculum, I want to welcome you to these web pages, intended for interested browsers and the students and faculty of the program. We believe the Core Curriculum is at the very heart of a liberal arts education. Drawing faculty from virtually every department of the College of Arts and Sciences, courses of the Core Curriculum provide the foundation for any major and a point of entry into lifelong intellectual inquiry. The Core's seminar-style instruction and emphasis on writing equip students with the most important skills college can provide: the ability to think critically, speak persuasively, and write powerfully.

Each fall, roughly five hundred freshmen choose to enter the Core Curriculum as one way of satisfying the CAS General Education requirements. Over their first four semesters Core students take eight courses in the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. All students attend common lectures, where they meet some of the University’s finest teachers and scholars. Students also meet weekly in small seminars led by professors, where they debate such topics as the place of morality in politics, free will and determinism, the social role of comedy, and the cultural impact of globalization.

In Core, students find a college-within-the-college. They get to know their peers and professors and form enduring friendships within the community. They attend a range of special events outside the classroom, as well, including lectures at Boston’s world-class museums, evening concerts, and plays. And they have a good time, too — as sponsors of a variety of student groups for aspiring poets and novelists, future journalists, film-buffs, and music-lovers.

The Core offers students a broad-gauged, integrated curriculum that contains both classical and contemporary thinkers. The program’s variety of perspectives provides a lasting education of depth and relevance. Teaching methods are tailored to the course. In the Humanities, we read and consider some of the greatest books ever written. We offer laboratory- and discussion-based teaching in the Natural Sciences, and we provide opportunities for students to meet with academics and policy-makers in the Social Sciences. In considering fundamental questions together in the Core, students forge the intellectual ties — with one another and with some of civilization’s greatest minds — that will sustain them as creative and vibrant members of society.

I hope you will find what you seek in these pages. We welcome inquiries. If would like to speak to students or faculty who are in the program, please contact us by email or by telephone at 617-353-5404.

Professor M. David Eckel, Assistant Dean of CAS
Director of the Core Curriculum