Curriculum Corner: Areas of Engagement and Embedded Skills

Current students must fulfill general education requirements in the Cornerstone program. However, those who enter in fall and after will be in the Engaged Citizenship Curriculum (ECC).

How will these two programs coexist? The short answer: they will combine forces when possible and work independently otherwise.

When students look for classes that fulfill Cornerstone requirements, they seek out the well-known shorthand for these courses: the number six indicates that a course’s content focuses on Minority Perspective; 2A is code for courses that fulfill the lab science portion of the Scientific Perspective.

In the ECC, many courses that have fulfilled a Cornerstone will now also carry credit for ECC’s Areas of Engagement and Embedded Skills. For example, HIST 222, American Women’s History, will now fulfill the Diversity and Power (DP) requirement in the ECC, as well as Cornerstone 6.

The goals of Cornerstone and the ECC do not overlap in all cases. Not all courses in the sciences that currently fulfill Cornerstone 2A will be designated as Scientific Reasoning (SR) in the ECC.

Nevertheless, because of the criteria for SR courses, many more departments will be represented among SR’s offerings than were represented in Cornerstone 2A. Courses that will count for SR include ones from Communication Studies, Economics, and Psychology.

There will still be enough Cornerstone courses available for current students as they complete their general education requirements over the next three years. In fact, there are many courses being offered this May Term that have recently been approved for Cornerstone credit: Art 190, The History of Modern Architecture (CS 5); Comm 290, Women and Journalism (CS 6); NaSc 190, Meteorology (CS 2A); Phil 190, Philosophy and Science Fiction (CS 4A).

The college will also retain Cornerstone credit for most current Cornerstones until all students who entered under that curriculum have graduated.