First-Year Humanities Commons

Together, the Chaminade Seminar and the Marie Thérèse Seminar provide foundational learning for a University of Dayton experience. These courses make up the First-Year Humanities CAP component, an educational experience that is focused upon Humanistic Inquiry, challenging students to ask: “What does it mean to be human?” These courses have the following learning goals: 1) Reading Primary Texts: Students will read a variety of primary texts (i.e., original sources rather than commentary upon those sources) closely and critically. 2) Analyzing and Writing: Students will analyze, in writing, a variety of texts contributing to larger historical conversations, debates, and traditions and as resources for understanding and appreciating the complexities of human identity, dignity, and experience. 3) Discovering Diversity, Social Justice, and Self: Students will develop an understanding of their place in community, country, and world in relationship to multiple others, with particular attention to differences – such as class, gender, and race – upon which social inequalities are constructed and maintained. 4) Engaging with the Catholic Intellectual Tradition: Students will engage central concepts of Catholic Intellectual Tradition (CIT) as they contribute to humanistic inquiry and reflection. These concepts specifically focus on the following CIT concepts as emphasized in “Characteristics of Marianist Universities”: the dignity and worth of human beings, reflection on one’s own vocation, the social character of human beings as demonstrated in the common good, consideration of those people who are marginalized, and reading the signs of the times.

Second-Year Writing

The Second-Year Writing Seminar, taken by students who have completed the First-Year Humanities Commons requirement, is an intermediate-level composition course focused on writing for the common good. The course is a distinctive feature of the UD Common Academic Program in that it offers students the opportunity to apply their critical reading, rhetorical abilities, and argumentation skills to engage with different kinds of communities, understand the complexity of social problems, and offer solutions through research practices that center human experience. It fulfills the second-year writing requirement for CAP.

Oral Communication

To enhance students’ ability to communicate effectively, all students complete three hours in Oral Communication, normally in their first or second year of study. The Oral Communication foundational course focuses on the concepts of dialogue and debate, with the goals of: engaging in constructive mutual dialogue in conversations and meetings; developing the ability to articulate, analyze and defend a position in a public forum; understanding the differences between dialogue and debate; and understanding relative advantages and disadvantages of each mode of communication. With its focus on dialogue and debate, the course assists students in the development of the skills necessary for learning, living and working in communities. By developing the ability to engage in conversation that advances understanding, students will be better able to interact and collaborate with persons from diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

Mathematics

To enhance quantitative reasoning skills, all students complete three hours in Mathematics. The particular course will vary based on the student's major and background in mathematics. The mathematics courses are most closely related to the institutional learning goals of scholarship, practical wisdom, and critical evaluation of our times.

Arts

To ensure that all students acquire a basic understanding of the arts as significant manifestations of diverse cultural, intellectual, aesthetic, and personal experiences, all students will complete a three-hour component in the Arts. The Arts component may include courses from the Departments of Music, Art and Design, English, Global Languages and Cultures, and the Theatre, Dance and Performance Technology Program. In addition, courses proposed for the film minor carrying the FLM prefix may also be eligible, as long as the proposed courses possess a primary student learning emphasis on helping students to develop skills and acquire experiences that enable them to understand, reflect upon, and value the creative process within the context of the arts. CAP Arts courses emphasize the vocabulary and production techniques of the arts, methods of aesthetic analysis, conventions for writing about and performing various art forms, and an understanding of the meaning of the arts within various cultural contexts. The requirement for CAP Arts may be satisfied by taking studio and performance courses as well as historical or critical studies courses. Students may satisfy the three-hour requirement with one three-hour course or a combination of one- and two-hour courses. Given the diversity of the Arts, the specific institutional learning goals addressed will vary across courses.

Social Science

Essential to life in the 21^st century is an understanding of the relationship between individuals, groups and institutions. All students will complete three hours in the Social Sciences. The courses satisfying this requirement will use social science theory and methods to critically examine a human issue or problem from at least one social science disciplinary perspective (anthropology, communication, criminal justice, economics, human rights studies, political science, psychology, sociology, social work, or women's and gender studies). The courses will emphasize institutional learning goals related to scholarship, critical evaluation of our times, and the diversity of the human world. The courses may be proposed by any social science department or by Women's and Gender Studies or Human Rights Studies, but must be taught by a faculty member with an appointment in a social science department (Communication, Criminal Justice and Security Studies, Economics, Political Science, Psychology, or Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work). Finally, courses satisfying this requirement must be numbered at the 100 or 200 level.

Natural Science

An understanding of many significant issues confronting our world today requires a basic understanding of science. Students must take one three-hour lecture course in the physical or life sciences or computer science, and a corresponding one-hour laboratory section. Lecture sections are either a pre-requisite or co-requisite to their correlative laboratory sections. Students are exposed to one of the five disciplines: biology, chemistry, computer science, geology, and physics. The science component actively challenges students to explore the scientific dimensions of complex, controversial or unresolved problems facing human society. It furthers the development of the institutional learning goals related to scholarship, practical wisdom, and critical evaluation of our times by challenging students to achieve an enriched understanding of the scientific method by applying it to issues of broad public interest. The community institutional learning goal is enhanced through the team-based learning that occurs in the laboratory setting.

Crossing Boundaries

The Crossing Boundaries component includes three courses (Faith Traditions, Practical Ethical Action, and Interdisciplinary Investigations) that challenge students and faculty to link aspects of their own lives, majors, and careers to a broader world within and outside academia. As a Catholic, Marianist, comprehensive university, the University of Dayton is particularly well-suited to develop curricular programs that forge these links and to offer extracurricular experiences to help students reflect on and understand these links. These courses focus on Faith Traditions, Practical Ethical Action, and Interdisciplinary Investigations. Collectively, these courses build on our strengths as a comprehensive Marianist university by engaging students and faculty across disciplinary lines and across academic units and will strengthen the Catholic intellectual tradition in significant ways. This tradition in Catholic and Marianist higher education emphasizes the centrality of theology and philosophy, the importance of linking faith and reason, the integration of knowledge, and the application of that knowledge to personal and social situations in the world today. The institutional learning goals related to faith traditions, diversity, practical wisdom, critical evaluation of our times, and vocation are particularly important for this set of courses.

Faith Traditions: The course on Faith Traditions is designed to encourage students to better understand, reflect on and place their own religious beliefs and experiences in a broader historical or cultural context. Courses satisfying the Faith Traditions component may be offered by any department provided that the courses develop students’ ability to examine their own faith commitments and to participate in dialogue with other faith traditions. The courses place religious traditions within their historical context; examine their philosophical foundations or the internal logic of religious thought, language and practice; compare religious traditions by examining their philosophical foundations, historical origins, artistic expressions, canonical texts and/or storied practices; or examine a religious tradition with which students are unfamiliar (e.g., a non-Christian tradition).

Practical Ethical Action: The Practical Ethical Action course is designed to cross the boundaries between the theoretical and the practical, and between the liberal arts and the applied fields. It offers the opportunity for faculty to cross the boundaries of their own disciplines to dialogue with faculty from other disciplines in ways that enrich their own understanding of important ethical issues and that enrich the courses they offer to students. Courses satisfying the practical ethical action component may be offered by any department provided that the courses engage students in thick description and analysis of ethical issues using concepts central to the study of ethics such as justice, rights, natural law, conscience or forgiveness, and that the courses provide sufficient normative content that allow students to reflect on value judgments and ethical reasoning and practical application. These courses draw from relevant interdisciplinary knowledge as well as an understanding of the professions and social institutions. 

Interdisciplinary Investigations: The integration of knowledge has a long-standing position within the Catholic intellectual tradition and an increasingly important role in understanding contemporary issues and problems. The Interdisciplinary Investigations courses provide students an opportunity to learn about different disciplinary methods of inquiry. The Interdisciplinary Investigations courses in CAP introduce students to the ways that different academic disciplines pursue knowledge in one of two ways: 1) by bringing together more than one academic discipline or 2) by providing an introduction to the key methods of investigation of a single discipline and inviting students to reflect upon the ways that those methods are the same and different from other disciplinary ways of knowing.

The Interdisciplinary Investigations courses that focus on interdisciplinarity (approach 1) transcend disciplinary boundaries and explicitly examine significant issues or problems in a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary framework. Taking a course that engages multiple disciplinary perspectives can broaden awareness of differing philosophies or analytic approaches, and it can offer new ways of conceiving of and resolving problems.

Interdisciplinary Investigations courses that focus on a single discipline (approach 2) will serve as an introduction to key methods of investigation, interpretation, exploration, and ways of knowing. Some modes of inquiry engage experimentation and creative practice; other modes employ cognitive systems or analytical frameworks. Still other modes of inquiry investigate the complexity of systems, languages, or cultures. Exposure to modes of inquiry prepares students to think critically about ways of acquiring, evaluating, and applying knowledge claims within their own discipline.

Collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts by faculty are possible for these courses. Courses offered by one faculty member that bring together different disciplinary perspectives to enhance students’ understanding of significant issues may also be offered

Advanced Studies

As a Catholic and Marianist institution of higher education, the University regards religious studies and philosophy as having special roles in the undergraduate curriculum and in the attainment of University-wide learning goals.  Students are expected to deepen their knowledge of the religious and philosophical traditions that inform the Catholic and Marianist education.  Advanced study in these areas, especially when conducted through interdisciplinary courses, also assists students in constructing integrated knowledge of the central human questions examined in a liberal education. The fields of philosophy and religious studies, together with historical study are indispensable for students’ education in the Catholic intellectual tradition. Students will take courses beyond the 100 level in these fields to further their understanding of the resources that the Catholic intellectual tradition offers for their own personal, professional and civic lives and also for the just transformation of the social world. By requiring every student to take three hours of courses in each of these advanced studies areas, religious, philosophical, and historical, the University expects students to engage in liberal learning that connects theory and practice and to draw upon the resources of the Catholic intellectual tradition as they consider how to lead wise and ethical lives of leadership and service.

Students will have flexibility in fulfilling these requirements. First, these courses will frequently focus on issues related to, and satisfy the criteria for the Faith Traditions, Practical Ethical Action, or Interdisciplinary Investigations components of the CAP. Second, the criteria for these requirements are disciplinary-based in the fields of religious, philosophical and historical studies and therefore not limited to specific departments. Courses offered outside the Departments of Philosophy, Religious Studies and History may count towards the advanced religious studies, philosophy and history requirements if the courses draw extensively from those disciplinary perspectives and address in significant ways aspects of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

Advanced Religious Studies: Courses satisfying the Advanced Religious Studies component might examine the central beliefs, texts or practices of one or more religious traditions or movements; examine ethics as a central feature of a religious tradition including the use of Catholic social teaching as a resource, or examine cultural expressions of religious identity or tradition as the central focus of theological or religious studies. Students will have flexibility in fulfilling these requirements. First, these courses will frequently focus on issues related to, and satisfy the criteria for, the Faith Traditions, Practical Ethical Action, or Interdisciplinary Investigations Crossing Boundaries CAP components. Second, the criteria for this requirement is disciplinary-based in the field of religious studies and, therefore, not limited to specific departments. Courses offered outside the Department of Religious Studies may count towards the Advanced Religious Studies  requirement if they draw extensively from the disciplinary perspectives and address in significant ways aspects of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

Advanced Philosophical Studies: Courses satisfying the Advanced Philosophical Studies component might evaluate competing solutions to theoretical or ethical options in the present day, or draw on the philosophical resources of the Catholic intellectual tradition to address the challenges of their times. Students will have flexibility in fulfilling these requirements. First, these courses will frequently focus on issues related to, and satisfy the criteria for, the Faith Traditions, Practical Ethical Action, or Interdisciplinary Investigations Crossing Boundaries CAP components. Second, the criteria for this requirement is disciplinary-based in the field of philosophical studies and, therefore, not limited to specific departments. Courses offered outside the Department of Philosophy may count towards the Advanced Philosophical Studies requirement if they draw extensively from the disciplinary perspectives and address in significant ways aspects of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

Advanced Historical Studies: Courses satisfying the Advanced Historical Studies component might engage students in the study and analysis of primary materials to further develop students’ historical sensibilities in a way that illuminates the historical dimensions of institutional learning goals (ILGs). The course could examine a historical topic drawing on the work of historians to show how interpretations of the past may change over time. Students will have flexibility in fulfilling this requirement. First, these courses will frequently focus on issues related to, and satisfy the criteria for, the Faith Traditions, Practical Ethical Action, or Interdisciplinary Investigations Crossing Boundaries CAP components. Second, the criteria for this requirement is disciplinary-based in the field of historical studies and, therefore, not limited to specific departments. Courses offered outside the Department of History may count towards the Advanced Historical Studies requirement if they draw extensively from the disciplinary perspectives and address in significant ways aspects of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

Diversity and Social Justice

As a Marianist university, the University has a special concern for the poor and marginalized and a responsibility to promote the dignity, rights and responsibilities of all persons and peoples. The University curriculum is responsible for contributing to this effort and does so throughout the Common Academic Program, but in a more focused way through a Diversity and Social Justice component. Every student will investigate human diversity issues within a sustained academic context by taking at least three credit hours of course work that have a central focus on one or more dimensions of diversity that are relevant to social justice. The course must have a central focus on one or more dimensions of human diversity on the basis of which systems, institutions or practices that obstruct social justice have functioned. The dimensions may include, but are not limited to, race, gender, socioeconomic class and sexual orientation. Courses may address diversity within the United States, in a global context, or both. Since the course uses a social justice framework, it will consider constructive responses to such injustice.

Courses approved to satisfy the Diversity and Social Justice component build on earlier CAP courses addressing diversity including the First-Year Humanities courses, the Second-Year Writing Seminar, and the Social Science, Natural Science and Oral Communication courses. The Diversity and Social Justice component may not double count with these courses, but may double count with courses taken to satisfy other CAP components or courses taken in the student’s major.

Major Capstone

The ability of students to integrate the knowledge acquired in their undergraduate career, both within the major and in the Common Academic Program, is greatly enhanced by a capstone experience. All students have a capstone course or experience in their major. The Capstone provides students the opportunity to engage, integrate, practice and demonstrate the knowledge and skills they have developed in their major courses and which reflect University's institutional learning goals, particularly vocation. The Capstone provides students the opportunity to engage in the scholarship, activity and/or practice of their major field and further the students’ understanding of their chosen vocation, career or profession. Students present their work in a forum appropriate to their major. This course or experience is designed by faculty in each major. It may, or may not, be assigned credit hours.

Experiential Learning

Guided by UD’s Catholic, Marianist mission to educate the whole person, participation in high-impact experiences is integral to cultivating leaders who are prepared to explore their vocations, address complex societal challenges, and contribute to the common good. All students will complete at least one high-impact experiential learning opportunity through which they will develop practical skills, career readiness, and deep vocational discernment. Through this component, the university will capture and track the full range of Experiential Learning that students achieve in and out of the classroom. The credit requirement for this CAP component will be variable, depending on the intensity and duration of the experience, or where the experience is housed in existing curricular and co-curricular spaces (e.g., 0-3 credit hours).