Core Curriculum Requirements
At Lasell University, students earn 42 credits for courses taken within the Core Curriculum. The Core Curriculum guides learning across all majors within Lasell's unique connected learning environment. With its emphasis on the overarching goal of Lifelong Learning, the Core provides students with intellectual experiences and skills necessary for synthesizing and applying their newfound abilities and knowledge to both their own self-development and their chosen career path Designed around multidisciplinary thinking, active learning, and problem-solving, the Core prepares students for meeting challenges in not only their chosen fields but also in our wider world.
CORE CURRICULUM REQUIRED COURSES
Foundational Requirements
Knowledge Perspective Courses
Aesthetics & Creativity
Individuals & Society
Global & Historical
Scientific Inquiry & Problem Solving
Quantitative Reasoning Requirement
Sophomore Multidisciplinary Experience (course)
Junior Ethics Experience (course)
Writing-Intensive courses
Speaking-Intensive course
Total minimum Core Curriculum Credits: 42
The Core Curriculum is made up of inquiry-based courses and internship and capstone experiences, creating a common connected learning core experience for students each year. As the courses increase in depth and complexity, students develop knowledge, skills, and ownership of their education, and create the habits of lifelong intellectual exploration and social responsibility.
The theme-based First Year Seminar emphasizes the core intellectual skills, while providing an introduction to the knowledge perspectives; connected learning projects and challenging class assignments incorporate synthesis and application.
In the first year, students also complete a mathematics course by placement and take two courses focused on writing skills. Students build on the skills in writing and quantitative literacy established in these foundational courses in two writing-intensive courses within the major and an additional quantitative reasoning course, often also within the major. In addition, one speaking-intensive course within the major focuses on oral presentation and speaking skills.
Four courses taken during the first two years engage students in understanding and solving problems they will encounter in their professional and personal lives from four different Knowledge Perspectives: Aesthetics and Creativity, Scientific Inquiry and Problem Solving, Global and Historical Perspectives, and Individuals and Society.
A Multidisciplinary Experience course, taken in the sophomore year, introduces a social or intellectual problem (such as sustainable cities) that cannot be addressed from a single knowledge perspective. Faculty guide students through a critical thinking process that crosses traditional disciplinary lines.
The Ethical Reasoning course, taken in the junior year as a hallmark experience, challenges students to analyze and grapple with real, current moral dilemmas, and their complex ethical solutions, by connecting cultural and historical ways of understanding ethical thinking with professional standards. In their last two years, students practice high-level Synthesis and Application by further integrating the skills, perspectives, and multidisciplinary approaches in many of their major-specific courses. In particular, the Internship and Capstone Experiences serve as the culmination of the Core Curriculum where students experience the highest level of connection between Core and Department outcomes, skills, and knowledge.