Core Class

Challenging New Students to Consider Humanity's Enduring Questions

It is one of SUA’s signature experiences, a rigorous introduction to university-level intellectual work during which fi rst-year students delve into the works of some of humanity’s most profound thinkers and grapple with life’s most vexing questions. Core 1 is a three-week, intensive seminar that both faculty and students describe as a consuming, eye-opening, and rewarding experience. With each section limited to 12 students, faculty members from across disciplines guide students through selections from seminal texts from around the globe. Professors choose readings from works such as Confucius’ The Analects, Plato’s Republic, Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and may augment those with additional works drawn from their own expertise.

The goals of the Core sequence – Core 1 is followed by Core 2 in the spring of students’ second year – are ambitious. Classes are designed to help students explore the commonalities and differences of the human experience from multiple perspectives, and develop critical thinking skills to evaluate ideas in relation to their own lives.

“Core is a point of departure, helping a student take a pen and begin to draw a map of the world of thought, find themselves on that map, and fi nd others in relation to themselves,” said John Pavel Kehlen, professor of Asian literature, who has been teaching Core sections since 2003. “We don’t pretend we will get answers, but asking the questions is the fi rst step to what I call becoming a liberal artist.”

Read the full article at www.soka.edu/news-events/news/challenging-new-students-consider-humanitys-enduring-questions