John Carroll University's Core Curriculum in the Liberal Arts deals with the creative, social, religious, philosophical, and scientific developments of past and present cultures and their ideas and human values.  These studies impart an appreciation for complexity and the ability to think critically and to write and speak with precision and clarity.  The Core Curriculum helps students to make informed, free choices of personal values to confront a changing world.  Because not all courses serve the purposes for which the Core Curriculum in the Liberal Arts exists, the faculty has approved the following guidelines for evaluating Core courses.

Principles Required for Core Courses:

1. Core courses are designed to open the mind, broaden awareness, and widen horizons rather than to prepare for specific careers.  They cultivate the intellect, stimulate the imagination, and develop general mental skills rather than vocational skills.  In the long run, such general skills constitute the best preparation for any career.
2. Core courses should stress critical thinking, problem-solving, and oral/written expression.
3. Core courses should encourage active learning.
4. Core courses should introduce students to the traditions and the common body of knowledge and/or the glossary of a discipline.
5. Core courses should introduce students to how an individual discipline employs various methodologies through which knowledge is generated.
6. Core courses should contain sufficient interdisciplinary aspects to build bridges to other disciplines.  Core courses should emphasize connections to other disciplines and should be taught so as to reflect other disciplines that constitute the Core.
7. Core courses are designed for nonspecialists and are suitable for non-majors, but each is planned in such a way as to introduce material of fundamental and lasting significance.  In this sense Core courses are foundation studies.
8. Core courses at the introductory level should be designed for first-year and sophomore students, although juniors and seniors will often be enrolled.
9. Introductory courses in major sequences may serve as Core courses only if they are also suitable for non-majors.
10. Core courses that are beyond a discipline's introductory offering should build upon concepts and methods conveyed in an introductory course.
11. Core courses are not tools to proselytize majors into a discipline, but should introduce concepts and methods of a discipline that may attract students to that major.
12. All sections of Core courses should be pedagogically rigorous as reflected by syllabi, assignments, examinations, and other requirements.
13. Core courses should help students to become aware of their own values and to develop a reflective view of life.

Where appropriate Core courses should:

• introduce the ethics of a discipline
• address the state-of-the-art technology in a discipline (e.g., computer applications)
• encourage the collaborative process of learning (students and teacher, students and peers)
• create an awareness among students of the current issues in a discipline
• broaden students' perspectives through attention to global concerns and to such issues as diversity and gender, environ­mental responsibility, and social justice.