College Catalog 2024-2025
General Education Liberal Arts Core
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Liberal Arts Core Curriculum
GOALS FOR THE LIBERAL ARTS CORE
The University of Virginia’s College at Wise provides a comprehensive liberal arts education designed to cultivate responsible citizens and effective leaders. The curriculum combines a broad-based liberal arts core with specialized major requirements to develop essential competencies in communication, analytical thinking, and critical reasoning. This approach aims to impart accumulated knowledge, enhance cultural awareness, develop key skills, and inspire lifelong learning. The program prepares students to engage meaningfully with society, understand interconnections between various disciplines and the world around them, and participate actively as informed citizens and leaders.
The Liberal Arts Core was designed with these guiding principles in mind.
- Intentionality - The Core will acquaint students with academic disciplines, but more significantly, create awareness of the bigger questions, both contemporary and enduring, of the global world in which they live.
- Interdisciplinarity - The Core will develop students’ ability to understand the interconnections among disciplines, the environment, society, and the world.
- Communication - The Core will provide students with the oral, written, and digital skills to construct clear and concise messages for a variety of contexts and audiences.
- Critical Thinking - The Core will enable students to evaluate experiences, information, and sources critically by recognizing explicit and tacit assumptions, as well as the consequences of those assumptions.
- Diversity - The Core will familiarize students with diverse perspectives and with the value of equity and inclusion in class, in the community, and in the larger world. Students will form moral and ethical judgments based on an appreciation of a diverse set of cultures and cultural practices with intercultural sensitivity.
- Engagement - The Core will encourage students to engage in experiential learning activities (civic engagement, community service, research, etc.) that connect students to the world around them and prepare them to participate in society as responsible citizens and effective leaders.
Liberal Arts Core Requirements
All students pursuing a baccalaureate degree will complete 48- 49 credit hours of the liberal arts Core curriculum. Many of the courses which meet these requirements are prerequisites for advanced study in the various majors. All students, including transfer students, should consult their academic advisor and the Catalog concerning the requirements of their prospective majors and select their liberal arts courses accordingly. Students can track their progress on their Degree Audits in the student portal. Note: One course may not be used to satisfy more than one of the listed area requirements.
First Year Experience
The first-year experience (FYE) is designed to assist students in the successful transition to the demands of undergraduate study. Its curriculum serves as an introduction to academic and college life by familiarizing students with resources available to succeed in student life and beyond. The goal is to engage students in the opportunities and activities that will shape their experience at UVA Wise, to equip them with the resources to be successful in attaining a college degree, and to connect them with the networks of individuals who will mentor and support them during their academic journey.
Written Communication
This foundational experience in written discourse will provide skills for students to interpret, communicate and express ideas and experiences through meaningful, organized, rational, and persuasive forms. It will further apply those skills to analytical and critical examinations of those forms, their intentions, and consequences
Global Communication
Our nation and world are multilingual and multicultural. Through the foundational experience in global communication, students develop fundamental conversational skills in a foreign language and meaningfully engage with non-English speaking cultures so that they are equipped with the communicative and intercultural competency necessary to be engaged, global citizens.
Quantitative Reasoning
The foundational experience in quantitative reasoning and mathematics will provide the skills to approach situations from a quantitative point of view, and rigorous training in mathematical techniques that can be used to understand them.
Scientific Reasoning
This foundational experience in scientific reasoning will provide students with the skills to understand the natural world and their place within it. These courses instill in students that science involves more than just a collection of facts or the recitation of a body of knowledge; it is a way of knowing that the scientific method can be used to evaluate and create new knowledge regarding natural phenomena.
Contextual Coursework 21 Hours
Engaged citizens and responsible leaders grapple with complex multifaceted problems and questions that cross disciplinary boundaries. They understand the deep relationships between the individual and the local, national, and global communities. This group of courses in the Core is designed to invite students into deep reflection about themselves, their personal relationships, and their obligations to the national and global community. The analytic and synthetic nature of these courses will empower students with the skills necessary to excel in both their personal and professional lives. Students must take at least 3 credit hours from each subarea (Self, Community, Nation, and World) and a total of 21 hours.
Studies of Self
Engaged citizenship begins with deep personal introspection. These courses emphasize the creative, physical, psychological, philosophical, and/or historical self. They encourage reflection upon and a better understanding of the self.
Studies of Community
An engaged citizen understands and appreciates their relationships and responsibilities to various communities. These courses emphasize our ethical and social relationships.They encourage reflection upon the interconnected ties among individuals and how they create a sense of community.
Studies of our Nation
An informed citizenry is a necessary ingredient for a healthy democracy; therefore, an engaged and contributing member of the republic must have a basic and factual understanding of American systems. These courses provide exposure to the diversity of the American experience and promote an understanding of the governmental, economic, cultural, literary, social, and/or historical structures/institutions of the United States.
Studies of our World
An engaged citizen understands and appreciates their relationships and responsibilities to the world and planet. Emphasizing the historical, political, cultural, literary, environmental, and/or economic relationships between the individual and the global community, these courses develop a broader contextual and systemic understanding of the world and planet as a whole.
Additional Requirements
Within the Contextual Coursework, students are required to take courses that meet the following three areas of study:
- Humanities/Fine Arts Course – At least one Contextual course (minimum 3 credit hours) must be from Art, English, History, Humanities, Music, Philosophy, or Theater
- Social/Behavioral Sciences – At least one Contextual course (minimum 3 credit hours) must be from Economics, Political Science, Psychology, or Sociology
- Inclusive Excellence – At least one course (minimum 3 credit hours) taken in the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum must be designated as a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Experiential Learning & Cultural Credits
CO-CURRICULAR REQUIREMENTS
Experiential Learning Activity (ELA): Students must complete one ELA prior to graduation. These activities can be courses that are taken as part of the Liberal Arts Core or one’s major, and include outside activities (like internships, undergraduate research, community engagement, and study abroad experiences).
Cultural Credits: Each student must attend eight (8) cultural activities (ideally four in the freshman/sophomore years and four in the junior/senior years). These are coded on the Degree Audit as GNE 1010 (first four) and as GNE 3010 (second four). Transfer students who first attend the College upon completion of their first year (typically 30 hours) at another institution of higher education must complete the junior/senior year requirement only. All first-time freshmen, except for those with completed Associate of Arts or Associate of Science degrees, must complete eight (8) cultural activities prior to graduating. Cultural activities are defined as approved on-campus activities of broad academic content that contribute to the College’s liberal arts mission. These typically include events such as concerts, theatre productions, art presentations, academic lectures, literary readings, panel discussions, scholarly conferences, and other academically significant events. Pro-Art activities and Symphony of the Mountains concerts held on or off campus are also eligible for cultural activity credit.
The Office of Academic Affairs is tasked with assigning cultural activity credit to events, recording student attendance, and keeping track of student totals of credits earned. In cases where the eligibility of an event is disputed, the request and other supporting materials will be submitted to the Liberal Arts Committee for a final decision. In order to be guaranteed this consideration, applications for cultural activity credit must be submitted at least two weeks before the event. Cultural activity logs and records are kept for one year beyond entry into the student information system in compliance with the Library of Virginia’s Records Retention and Disposition Schedule. When students attend any of these events and wish to have them count as a cultural activity, they must sign in when they arrive and out at the end of the program. If students do not sign out or if they do not remain for the whole event, they will not receive cultural activity credit. Students can track the completion of these requirements in the Reports and Billing section of the student portal.
Total Credit Hours: 48-49
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