Program Overview
Civitae Core Curriculum Overview
What is the design of the Civitae Core Curriculum?
Civitae consists of three levels: Foundations, Perspectives, and Symposium.
Students must complete 39-40 credits to complete the program.
- Foundations level (24-25 credits)
- Perspectives level (12 credits)
- The Symposium (3 credits)
At the Foundations level, students engage in creative inquiry, cultivate curiosity, and develop foundational knowledge and skills in the disciplines. The Foundations level consists of:
Two First-Year courses -- CTZN 110: Inquiry into Citizenship and ENGL 165: Writing & Rhetoric,
AND one course from each of six Pillar categories listed below.
- Historical & Contemporary Insights (3 credits)
- Human Behavior & Social Institutions (3 credits)
- Global Citizenship (3-4 credits)
- Aesthetic Expression (3 credits)
- Quantitative Reasoning (3 credits)
- Scientific Reasoning (3 credits)
At the Perspectives level, students develop and articulate informed perspectives essential to participation in civic and global life by integrating knowledge and skills across disciplines. Perspectives are disciplinary-based integrative learning experiences, intentionally designed to make explicit connections between courses, fields of study, and disciplines or between disciplinary knowledge and its application outside the classroom. Students choose one course from each of the following categories or pairs of categories:
- World Languages Perspectives
- Historical/Contemporary Perspectives OR Behavioral/Social Perspectives
- Global Perspectives OR Aesthetic Perspectives
- Quantitative Perspectives OR Scientific Perspectives
The culminating experience of Civitae is The Symposium. Students take CTZN 410: Symposium on the Common Good. CTZN 410 is designed to engage students in critical deliberation of citizenship and the issues citizens face in their communities.
The Symposium is organized around a broad theme, rotated on a regular basis, ideally three to six years. The Symposium and its theme create a common shared experience across sections of the course. Faculty design their Symposium section to support students’ exploration of issues and challenges relating to the broad theme through a disciplinary lens. The Symposium course results in a public, campus-wide Symposium Day to move students from discussion to action and to highlight the Symposium course as a common experience for Longwood citizen leaders.