|
||||
|
||||
       |
1701 North State Street Jackson, MS 39210-0001 (800)352-1050 (601)974-1000
|
||||
|
||||
|
A Mission Statement for the Core:
The purpose of the Core Curriculum is to provide the Millsaps student with a firm foundation in the Liberal Arts Abilities, those habits of mind the college considers essential in the development of mature scholars and productive citizens. Specifically, the Core fosters reasoning, communication, historical consciousness, and social and cultural awareness. Designed by faculty from all divisions and based on the methods of every academic discipline, the Core Curriculum introduces our students to the tools of scholarly inquiry needed for success at Millsaps College and in life at large.
|
I'm supposed to talk about "the Core" of the Millsaps curriculum in this paper and how it has changed me. But it’s difficult to distinguish the boundaries that separate Millsaps' stated objectives from my own, more personal experiences. At Millsaps, the core isn’t just some introductory kernel around which disciplinary specifics are aligned. The core is an essence, a methodology, an epistemology, that permeates every class and extends beyond into activities, spirituality, and even personal relationships. The core is the catalyst that challenges and rearticulates ideology; it opens up dialogue with unfamiliar people and thereby expands our vocabulary of foreign concepts. Naturally, these fundamental changes have important consequences for personal growth and development. I cannot adequately discuss my Millsaps career without referencing experiences that see far from academic. The journey from entering freshman to graduating senior is defined as much by friendship as studying. |
As a Millsaps Student, you will begin your college education with a set of courses designed to help you make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime experience. We call these courses our "Core Curriculum" because they represent the heart of a liberal education. Whatever your career goals, this Curriculum will start you on the path to becoming a truly educated person.
Throughout a series of nine courses to be completed by the end of sophomore year and a tenth in senior year, students acquire key intellectual skills and perspectives - our "liberal arts abilities" - within an interdisciplinary context. In the humanities, Core 2, 3, 4, and 5 take a chronological approach that explores a particular historical epoch and may be fulfilled in one of two ways: either via the theme-based IDST Topics sequence during your first four semesters, or else over the course of a single year in a double-credit program called The Heritage of the West in World Perspective. Taken as a whole, either option enables a student to "focus" on particular fields of knowledge: fine arts, history, religion, literature, and philosophy.
By contrast, Core 6, 7, 8, and 9 are drawn from the areas of social and natural sciences as well as business; they may be fulfilled in any order. Core 6-9 courses introduce students to the scientific method, and each contains an element of writing appropriate to its discipline. Like all other Core courses, these courses pursue the liberal arts abilities as far as possible, within the context of mathematics, laboratory sciences, social sciences, business, and computer science. As a final step in your undergraduate education in the liberal arts, Core 10, "Reflections on Thinking & Writing," may be part of your own major"s senior seminar. Core 10 asks every Millsaps student to reflect in a careful essay upon an education that enables you to take charge of your own learning and to examine the relationship between your chosen field of study and our College's Liberal Arts Curriculum. Millsaps believes that the liberal arts abilities you acquire in the Core Curriculum form the life-long basis of every educated adult's most useful tools.
What will be expected of the educated person in the twenty-first century? This is the question which the Millsaps faculty considered when they began the redesign of the Curriculum in 1990. While no one knows the future, several things stand out as unmistakable features of the world you will be entering upon graduation.
Developments in information technology, primarily as a result of the computer, have radically transformed our access to information. There are no longer significant spatial or temporal limits to the availability of knowledge. You can do a search of library resources anywhere in the world from a computer terminal in your own room. Because of this new technology, the world's knowledge grows at an ever more rapid pace. The educated person can no longer expect to know everything there is to know - even in his or her area of specialization - but will be expected to be skilled in finding out what there is to know.
