Proceeding from the College’s mission and its “Guiding Principles for Academic Work,” liberal learning has three interdependent structural elements:
Intellectual and Scholarly Growth
The first sparks intellectual and scholarly growth characterized by students’ increasing ability to pose intellectually challenging questions, confront significant problems, and apply focused rigor in seeking promising resolutions. This element ensures that learners gain habits of mind necessary to study and understand human knowledge and how it applies to complex problems.
Civic Responsibility
The second element enables students to relate beliefs, values, and intellectual habits to their civic role in society. Such vision requires deep understandings of ways race, ethnicity, and gender have shaped local and global communities.
Human Inquiry
The third element fosters familiarity with essential knowledge about broad sectors of human inquiry. Such familiarity enables students to be conversant in the broad range of intellectual discourse.