The Regis College Core: “How Ought We to Live?
Derived from the University Mission Statement, the above question is reaffirmed as the organizing theme of the Core curriculum. Every course in the Core is designed to help students understand, explore, and live this question. Regis University recognizes that in today’s diverse and complex world, education cannot be limited to one field of study. Instead, it is the goal of the University to give each student a full range of academic exposure. Building upon a 450 year educational tradition, our core education is grounded in a Jesuit and Catholic vision of human development. Through its emphasis on active learning and reflective thinking, the core education should broaden a student’s capacity to make critical judgments in a wide range of areas. To this end, Regis College requires that each student complete a liberal arts core curriculum.
Regis University’s mission is to develop leaders in the service of others. Therefore, the Regis College Core Curriculum is firmly rooted in the Regis University Core Philosophy Statement. The Core Curriculum is guided by the framework of the Characteristics of the Core Educational Experience: Development of the Whole Person, Academic Challenge, Liberal Arts Foundation, Integration, Ethical Inquiry and Reflection, Spirituality and Religion, Concern for Justice, Global Awareness and Leadership.
All Core courses will challenge students to reflect on tradition, continuity, and change while celebrating the essential goodness of the world, the compatibility of faith and reason, and the joy of learning. Through the Foundational Core, with its emphasis on rhetorical skills (writing, speaking, reading and listening), to the Distributive Core with its focus on key modes of scholarly inquiry and discovery, to the Integrative Core, which connects new learning with prior knowledge and personal experience across disciplines, the Core encourages students to become lifelong learners in the Jesuit tradition.
Core Repeatability Policy
Students who fail any Core course (with the exception of RCC 200) must repeat the same course in a subsequent semester for which the failing grade was received. Students failing RCC 200 must take EN 203 in order to complete their composition requirement. Students are subject to the Repeat Grade Improvement Option guidelines as outlined in the General Information section of the Bulletin.
Core Transfer Policy
RCC 200, Writing Analytically, fulfills the writing requirement for the Core. All first-year students, including those with AP credit in English Composition, must take RCC 200. All transfer students with fewer than 17 semester hours of transfer credit must take RCC 200. Transfer students with 17 semester hours or more of transfer credit who do not have an English composition course must take EN 203 -- Intermediate Composition or, with written permission of the Associate Dean for Core, RCC 200. Transfer students with 17 hours or more of transfer credit, including an English composition course or its equivalent, are not required to take either RCC 200 or EN 203. Transfer students with 60 or more hours of transfer credit may substitute no more than two courses for the integrative core (RCC 400D, RCC 410E, RCC 420J, RCC 430M). Students cannot waive the requirements; they may substitute upper-division, thematically similar courses for up to two of the integrative core requirements.
The First Year Experience (6 credits) is a two course sequence taken in the fall and spring of the first year. These courses introduce Regis College students to the idea of a Jesuit liberal arts education by foregrounding the guiding question for our core curriculum: "How ought we to live?" within the context of the Jesuit vision of a liberated human life. These small seminars develop competencies in writing, speaking, critical thinking and research.
The First Year Experience introduces students to the Regis Mission and the Jesuit vision for liberal arts education, nurturing the life of the mind, within an environment conducive to effective learning and personal development. These courses also provide foundational knowledge of the arts, sciences or humanities for the remainder of the core.
The spring term course will satisfy the distributive requirement in its discipline (for example, a spring term PL course will satisfy the core Philosophy requirement).
Fall Term
RCC 200 - Writing Analytically
This course is a writing-intensive seminar required for all students in the Fall of their first year at Regis. It focuses on critical reading, thinking and writing, and serves as an orientation to college life.
Credits: 3SH
RCC 200A - Writing Analytically for Commitment Program Students
This course is a writing-intensive seminar required for all Commitment Program students in the Fall of their first year at Regis. It focuses on critical reading, thinking, and writing, and serves as an orientation to college life. There is a service learning requirement for this course.
Credits: 3SH
RCC 200H - Honors Writing Seminar
This course begins a five-semester honors sequence of historically recursive seminars that bring the traditions of Christianity and classical learning into fruitful engagement with new developments in thought and culture. It examines the timeless struggle between reason and emotion, mind and heart, situating the conversation within an ongoing dialog on the nature of education and a university’s role in fostering it.
Credits: 3SH
Spring Term
RCC 200B - Writing Analytically for Commitment Program Students
This course is a continuation of RCC 200A and is a reading and writing seminar which focuses on research writing. There is a service learning requirement for this course.
Credits: 3SH
RCC 300H - Tradition and Innovation (for Honors Program Students)
This course is the second in a five-semester honors sequence, and draws upon the intellectual tradition commonly called the humanities—an interdisciplinary blend of literature, art/music history, philosophy, history, film, and so on—as it investigates the play between tradition and innovation in the human story. It emphasizes critical analysis and writing competence.
Credits: 3SH
Communicative Intensive Distributive Core Courses
PL 270C – Philosophical Explorations
Philosophical Explorations invites students to enter into the rich, millennia old, philosophical conversation. As participants in this ongoing conversation, students will learn to question and develop their beliefs about the central issues of life, to clarify and modify their pre-suppositions, to grow in critical thinking, and to experience an intellectual conversion to responsible and reflective thinking.
RT 201C – Religion and the Human Quest
Religion and the Human Quest engages approaches drawn from the academic study of religion, and challenges students to participate in critical reflection on religious traditions and the quest for personal and social wholeness.
FAC 200C – Art in Culture
Art in Culture introduces the visual arts as an expression of human values within a cultural context and develops a visual vocabulary and critical methods for evaluating and responding to art.
FAC 255C - Music of the 20th Century
A survey of classical music in the western world in the twentieth century. Covers trends such as modality, atonality, serialism, neoclassicism, experimental music, and electronic and computer music and the social contexts surrounding these movements.
COM 210C – Speech Communication
Speech Communication provides an overview of the process of communication and introduces Communication theory. It also offers practical training in the fundamentals of effective presentation for individuals in both public speaking and group communication settings, and emphasizes discussion of contemporary issues and the analysis of public discourse.
MT 270C – Introduction to Statistics
Introduction to Statistics presents standard topics in introductory statistics for students whose major is not mathematics. Topics include descriptive statistic, probability distributions, estimations, hypothesis testing, linear regression and correlation, etc.
MT 272C – Statistics for the Life Sciences
Statistics for the Life Sciences presents introductory statistics emphasizing application in biology, psychology, neuroscience, and kinesiology. Includes descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing, regression, t-tests, Chi-square, and ANOVA with particular emphasis to analysis using p-scores.
PY 250C – General Psychology
General Psychology introduces the science of behavior and mental processes through a systematic study of representative areas of psychology.
The Distributive Core (40 to 46 credits) represents a variety of offerings in disciplines that provide the underpinning of a solid liberal arts education. These specifically designed core courses within the following areas of study expose students to a wide range of academic disciplines, perennial questions, and methods of inquiry that broadens a student's ability to make informed, critical judgments.
A current and updated list of approved courses is available in the Regis College Dean’s Office.
Economic Systems
EC 200 or EC 320 AND EC 330
Credits: 3 to 6 SH
Fine Arts
Any 200-Level FAC course, FAHS 211, FAHS 212
Credits: 3 SH
Foreign Language (FR, GR, LT, SP)
Two classes in one language
Credits: 6 to 8 SH
Mathematics
MT 204, MT 270, MT 270C, MT 272, MT 272C, MT 360A, MT 360B
Credits: 3 to 4 SH
Natural Science with Lab (AS, BL, ENVS, GE, NS, PH)
AS 250/251, BL204/205, BL 208/209, BL 216/217, BL 260/261, BL 262/263, ENVS 250/251 GE 208/209, PH 202A/205A, PH 204A/205A, NS 260/261
Credits: 4 SH
History
Any 200-level HS course
Credits: 3 SH
Philosophy
PL 270, PL 270C, PL 270H
Credits: 3 SH
Religious Studies
RT 201 OR RT 201C, AND any 300-level RT course
Credits: 6 SH
Social Sciences (AN, CR, ED, PJ, POL,.PY, SO, WS)
AN 204 , ED 204 , POL 215, POL 231, POL 241, PY 250, PY 250C, PY 250H SO 200, SO 203, SO 204
Credits: 3 SH
***For complete course descriptions, see the Regis College Bulletin
The Integrative Core (12 credits): Students take four upper division interdisciplinary courses in their junior and senior years. These integrated courses build on the intellectual and skill development of the Foundational and Distributive Core, and are focused around essential themes expressed by Regis' Mission and the Regis College Core Philosophy Statement: Diversity and Cultural Tradition; Global Environmental Awareness; Justice and the Common Good; and Search for Meaning. These courses are deliberately value-laden, emphasizing, where appropriate, Jesuit and Catholic values and understandings. They aim at developing leaders in service to others. Courses may include shared texts, team-taught approaches and community-based learning and internships.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
As of Fall 2009, the Regis College Core Curriculum has changed.
Students entering BEFORE Fall 2009 – Substitute one 400-level Integrative Core Seminar for each Sophomore, Junior, or Senior Seminar that you HAVE NOT completed with a passing grade.
- If you took a Sophomore Seminar but not a Junior or Senior Seminar, you need TWO additional 400-level Integrative Core Seminars from any category.
- If you took a Sophomore and Junior Seminar but not a Senior Seminar, you need ONE additional 400-level Integrative Core Seminar from any category.
- If you took a Sophomore, Junior, and Senior Seminar, NO additional Integrative Core Seminars are required.
Students entering FALL 2009 OR AFTER - Need to take ONE Integrative Core Seminar from EACH category
These integrated courses cross disciplinary boundaries and combine multiple competencies. Though individual courses approach these themes from a variety of perspectives, each course is organized around one of the following themes:
RCC 400D - Diversity and Cultural Tradition
These courses will explore issues of diversity by examining the issues of groups that historically have been oppressed. Fundamental questions about diversity and in particular how the self and others constitute our global society will be examined.
Credits: 3SH
RCC 410E - Global Environmental Awareness
These courses examine the social, historic, political, and economic principles that have led to our current environmental status; they also consider the possibility that artistic, behavioral, communicative, and philosophical thought can address these problems.
Credits: 3SH
RCC 420J - Justice and the Common Good
These courses explore the concept and application of justice in relation to the common good. Multiple perspectives and disciplines offer critical examination of the theory and practice of justice for all.
Credits: 3SH
RCC 430M - Search for Meaning
*Please note that the above core studies requirements, along with the completed major, minor and general elective courses must total at least 128 credit hours for a Regis College degree.
Credits: 3SH