Core Facts

Proponents of the Core claim certain problems that beset Gen Ed will be avoided. Gen Ed, they say provided no guidlines for selection of its courses, and so over the years accumulated an ill-defined hodge-podge of offerings.

The Core Curriculum, the brainchild of Dean Rosovsky's 1974 review of undergraduate education and five years of professorial debate and intensive faculty committee work, will be phased in over the next three years to replace the ailing 34-year-old General Education (Gen Ed) program. Under the Core, the three-part Gen Ed requirement--Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities--will become five sections--Literature and the Arts, Historical Study, Social Analysis and Moral Reasoning, Foreign Cultures, and Science.

Beginning with the freshman entering in the fall of 1982, students must take eight half-year courses spread among the five areas. This year freshmen must take any two Core courses as part of the transitional Gen Ed requirement. Aside from these five areas, the Core eventually will set requirements in mathematics, foreign language and expository writing.