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ERIC Number: EJ1161003
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: N/A
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0024-1822
EISSN: N/A
Cocurricular Arts Programming and an Integrative First-Year Experience
Creech, James; Zomorodian, Maryam
Liberal Education, v103 n3-4 Sum-Fall 2017
Engagement with the arts is a fundamental element of a liberal education, especially in the first year of college. Liberal education seeks to form critical, creative citizens who can participate actively in "the various conversations that constitute a culture." The intellectual growth sparked by the arts serves many of the essential learning outcomes of liberal education identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), especially knowledge of human cultures, critical and creative thinking, civic knowledge and engagement, and intercultural knowledge and competence. Cocurricular arts programming can provide all first-year students, regardless of major, the opportunity to engage widely with the arts during the most formative time of their college careers without the constraints or divisions of the curriculum. The University of Notre Dame is developing new approaches that blend the benefits of cocurricular arts engagement with those of integrative advising. This work has occurred in the context of an undergraduate core curriculum that requires all students to take one fine arts or one literature course (or, for students in the College of Arts and Letters, one of each). The Notre Dame curriculum ensures that all students engage academically with the arts for at least one semester, regardless of their majors. Nevertheless, many students approach the requirement as another item on the checklist, to be completed at some point in their undergraduate careers, while others find their interest in exploring the arts limited by restrictive curricula (for example, in the College of Engineering, where the curriculum follows an established sequence with little room for electives). Notre Dame's First Year of Studies, which is presented in this article, is using voluntary cocurricular programming to address some of these curricular limitations and facilitate students' engagement with the arts as part of an integrative liberal education.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Indiana
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A