CORE - Core Curriculum

What is the core of a UP education? The Anchor Seminar and accompanying workshops explore this question by introducing university life, the Core curriculum, and the values of a liberal arts education at a Holy Cross institution. Faculty and student leaders discuss, model, and engage Core Habits of Heart and Mind, while facilitating a positive transition into UP’s educational community. 

This exploration-level course will surveying topics in modern physics (relativity, quantum mechanics) and consider technical applications (GPS, MRI, nuclear power). Students will learn about scientific and cultural forces that led to the development of modern physics, including consideration of how scientific progress is affected by history and society. Student should be comfortable with basic algebra. No prior physics knowledge is expected.

Why does democracy matter? What is your democratic civic duty? Using multiple disciplinary lenses, and engaging with collaborators across the University and beyond, students will interrogate perhaps the biggest challenge of our time: how to shore up liberal democratic norms within a diverse and fractured society. While this course will meet weekly, significant learning will take place asynchronously online.

In this responsive, transdisciplinary course, and with the collaboration of multiple University faculty and outside participants, students grapple with some of today’s biggest crises. Students will use an array of lenses to explore how climate change, human rights, and our global family intersect in the pursuit of a sustainable, peaceful, and just future. While this course will meet weekly, most learning will take place asynchronously online.

In this transdisciplinary course, and with the instruction of faculty across the University, students will cultivate a moral imagination while considering diverse disciplinary perspectives on the good life. Students will learn about human flourishing in domains ranging from work and money to relationships and the common good, building a personal good life framework through dialogue. While this course meets weekly in person, additional learning will take place asynchronously online.

The study of chemistry in a variety of art forms. Students engage in creative processes through in-class activities, some of which result in the creation of a tangible piece of art (etched glass, fresco, cyanotype, diazo print, copper etching, and jewelry colored by thin film interference). Other topics include pigments and dyes, paintings, photography, and techniques used to analyze artworks and detect forgeries. Two papers and a student-designed final project are assigned. Fee: $80

The course explores the chemistry involved in the creation and cultures of food. Students will learn through lab activities such as kitchen spherification about chemistry in the appearance, taste and shape of food. Students will also use scientific thinking to engage in sous vide cooking and the making of cheese, bread and kimchi. A survey of the anthropology of fermentation offers a sense of how global consciousness informs the science of food. Fee: $80