About
The Core’s approach—which includes classroom learning, labs, reflection opportunities, and experiences that extend beyond the classroom—operates at the nexus of knowledge, beliefs, and actions. It encourages students to integrate what they learn into their everyday lives, priming them to become engaged, effective global citizens.
The Boston College Core Curriculum guides students on journeys of interdisciplinary inquiry to discover how to think about the world. Students explore new ways of knowing and being, helping them discern who they want to be, how they want to live—and why.
Since the founding of the first Jesuit school in 1548, the Society of Jesus has been deeply committed to rigorous education that connects the life of the mind with one’s heart and spirit and that engages the whole person in the world. In earlier centuries, Jesuit education was based on the Ratio Studiorum—a developmental plan for humanistic education that moved from Latin and Greek to classical authors, rhetoric, and poetry to mathematics, physics, and philosophy to theology.
In the twenty-first century, students no longer are required to take Greek and Latin, and theology is not something to study only in one’s senior year. Nevertheless, a commitment to rigor, integration, and education of the whole person remain essential to the Boston College Core Curriculum. The Core rests at the heart of a liberal arts education in our Jesuit, Catholic context. It connects intellectual rigor with student development and formation, engaging students’ minds, hearts, and imaginations. The Core thus provides an integrative foundation oriented by the traditions of the past, engaged with the realities of our present, and open to the possibilities of the future.