Christ at the Core

At its heart, Christ at the Core is a curricular plan that deepens Wheaton College’s focus on faith and learning and on our student’s capacities to discern God’s truth across the disciplines. This proposal shifts general education requirements from a distributional framework to an outcomes based model with a Shared Core of common courses and a Thematic Core in which students take an array of courses designed to satisfy broad outcomes.

The Shared Core fosters developmental learning through pursuit of the Christian liberal arts, with special attention to integrating faith with learning through a First Year Seminar, a mid-career integrative Advanced Seminar, and finally a Core Curriculum Capstone Experience. Students will shape their own learning experience to their intellectual needs and vocational calling through their selected Thematic Core courses, which draw upon the strengths of the academic disciplines but allow for multidisciplinary and creative course offerings.

"Christ is at the center of our pursuit of excellence in learning. So in opening this exciting new chapter of general education, we're really making a commitment as a community to grow in faithfulness to him," said General Education Summit Committee member Abigail Canfield '15.

The program is meant to give greater flexibility to faculty in shaping curricular options and greater flexibility to students as they strive to integrate their core learning with their work in their major fields.

"Our hope and sincere expectation," said President Philip Ryken '88, "is that the new general education curriculum will keep Jesus Christ at the center of a Wheaton education, reinforce our liberal arts identity, strengthen faculty ownership of general education, and provide students with richer depth and greater flexibility in meeting their general education requirements."