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-: Hello everyone, my name is Jason Mogen
and I'm an admissions officer
for Columbia Undergraduate Admissions.
This video reviews the Core Curriculum,
the hallmark of a Columbia undergraduate education.
The Core Curriculum
is the foundational general education requirement
for all Columbia College and Columbia Engineering students.
It's a series of named courses and general requirements
that are completed throughout the duration of the four years
of an undergraduate's academic career.
The Core Curriculum celebrated its centennial in 2019.
It is the oldest singular curriculum in the United States.
There are four distinct features of a Core Curriculum class.
First, students are asked to engage with primary sources.
Undergraduates have the opportunity
to form their own opinions, do their own analyses
and form their own arguments around primary sources
that are put in front of them without the influence
of existing scholarly research or interpretation.
This works in tandem with a second hallmark
of a Core Curriculum class:
it is grounded in small discussion-based work.
We center conversation in Core Curriculum classrooms,
where students can share those opinions,
perspectives and interpretations,
and also gain those different perspectives
and worldviews from their peers,
allowing them to broaden their own worldviews,
their own perspectives and have that critical eye
when looking at future work.
Another feature of a Core Curriculum class is that it
is simultaneously non-disciplinary and interdisciplinary.
All of the Core Curriculum classes focus on delving
into the human condition, asking big picture questions
that don't necessarily have straightforward answers.
This work can happen across disciplines.
If you're taking a course like Literature Humanities,
also known as the Masterpieces of Western Literature,
your faculty member might not necessarily be
from the English department.
They could be housed under the philosophy department,
Slavic studies, French, anthropology or another field
and provide their own unique perspective
when they are guiding discussion in the classroom.
The same is true for the students within each class.
Students are not broken out into sections based
on their major or intended major.
We intentionally put students together
from across disciplines, so that they can provide
their own academic perspectives on the work being studied.
You can be learning alongside a dancer, an anthropologist,
a physicist, a civil engineer and each student
has the capacity to bring their own unique perspective
to the work at hand because of the particular academic lens
and interests that they have.
The final distinguishing feature of a Core Curriculum class
is a communal sense of learning.
All Columbia College students
and Columbia Engineering students share the experience
of going through the Core Curriculum,
and it defines very much
of what it means to be a Columbia undergraduate.
The same is true for our alumni community,
who graduate from Columbia College and Columbia Engineering.
They too have gone through the Core Curriculum.
Alum from the past 100 years have experienced the Core
in some iteration, and it allows for undergraduates
to better connect with alumni all around the world
who have this shared academic experience.
Many of these classes
also have a temporal component to them.
For example, Literature Humanities
is taken by all first-year students in Columbia College
in their first year.
Even though classes are small,
discussion-based courses of 20 students or fewer,
the entirety of the first-year Columbia College class
has the experience of reading the same texts
at the same time, of studying together,
of having discussions and debates in dining halls
and residence hall lounges and on the steps of Low Library,
around the texts that they read
in their Literature Humanities course.
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The Core Curriculum is composed of The Classes
and The Requirements.
The Classes is a series of named courses that are grounded
in primary sources from the Western cannon.
These courses include Literature Humanities
or the Masterpieces of Western Literature,
where students read from Homer's Iliad
through Tony Morrison Song of Solomon.
They ask questions about the influence of wordplay
and literature in broader society
and individual versus familial action,
whether or not there is the existence of fate
or if we have free will.
In University Writing, students learn how to digest evidence
from primary sources and formulate
their own arguments and opinions.
These are groups of 15 students, led by a moderator
who have the opportunity to workshop essays
to learn how to write cohesive and concise
and persuasive arguments.
Within Frontiers of Science, students have the opportunity
to learn from four distinguished faculty members
within the sciences at Columbia University.
After attending a weekly large lecture,
groups are broken up into small discussion groups
of 20 students or fewer where they have the opportunity
to engage with how questions involving the scientific field
are influencing society at large,
understand how to use that scientific mindset
when approaching a problem.
Contemporary Civilization is also one of the named courses
for the Core Curriculum.
This was that initial seminal course
that was previously called Peace Issues back in 1919.
This is an amalgamation of philosophy, economics,
religion, political science and history that ranges
from the classics, from ancient Greece and Rome,
all the way through to Simone de Beauvoir and W.E.B. Dubois.
The final two courses are Music Humanities
and Art Humanities.
They're each a semester and they engage with New York City
by asking students to visit museums,
like The Museum of Modern Art
or The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
To attend concerts at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall
and other concert halls throughout New York City
and understand what it means to produce good art
and good music,
what defined these works as masterpieces,
how to interpret them, understand their historical
and societal context and how to appreciate
these works as well.
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Though there are a significant number of courses
and requirements that students must complete
as part of the Core Curriculum,
there's still plenty of flexibility within
and beyond the Core Curriculum.
Students can choose the courses that they take
to complete those requirements within the Core Curriculum,
giving them the opportunity to pursue a number of electives
as part of the Core.
Many students find that through the Core Curriculum,
they have the opportunity to pursue a number
of different disciplines that they might not have considered
when entering college, whether it's through one
of the named courses that they have to take
or through one of the requirements that they must complete.
Also, at no point are students expected
to only take Core Curriculum courses in any given year.
Even as early as your first year on campus,
students have the ability to take electives,
so that they can pursue any number of majors
or concentrations that they would like
when they declare their major their sophomore year.
Both Columbia College
and Columbia Engineering undergraduates participate
in the Core Curriculum, but there are some distinctions
between how each school
pursues completing these requirements.
Within Columbia College, students are expected to complete
all of The Classes and The Requirements,
which amounts to about a third of their education.
Students will take Literature Humanities,
University Writing and Frontiers of Science
in their first year as Columbia College students.
In their second year, there'll be pre-assigned
to Contemporary Civilization courses.
For the rest of The Requirements and The Classes,
students can choose when they want to complete
these different requirements.
Columbia Engineering students take a modified version
of the Core Curriculum that amounts to about a fourth
of their education.
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The Core Curriculum is the defining feature
of a Columbia undergraduate education.
Students and alumni alike develop the creative
and critical intellectual capacity in pursuit of meaningful
and productive lives through the Core Curriculum courses
they take as undergraduates.
When students complete the Core Curriculum,
they leave transformed.
They gain the ability to create their own interpretations
of evidence that's put forth in front of them.
They have the ability to question the world,
to have a critical eye and ask why society exists
in the way it does.
Why individuals' behaviors are enacted the way they are.
And they also develop a sense of community.
As the Core is over a hundred years old,
students can connect with both their peers on campus
and alumni who have gone through the Core
for the past 100 years.
Students will find that all around the world,
there are alumni from Columbia College
and Columbia Engineering who have delved deep
into the human condition through
their Core Curriculum courses who have read the same texts,
listened to the same music, reviewed the same artwork
and it provides them an opportunity to bond
with one another, even if they didn't attend the school
at the same time.