About

About

Serving as the cornerstone of the liberal arts experience at UVA, the College of Arts & Sciences' College Curriculum prepares our students to lead lives of engaged citizenship by exposing students to questions of value, beauty, history, ethics, and the nature of the physical world. Students in the College of Arts & Sciences complete the College Curriculum to fulfill their general education curricular requirements prior to graduation.

Six Guiding Principles for the Curriculum

Courses in the College Curriculum will:

  1. Shed new light on enduring and emerging questions –both in scholarship and in the lives of our students.
  2. Model and encourage a sense of intellectual wonder, generosity, and curiosity.
  3. Orient students to learning as a process of both flux and fixity, and will embrace the ambiguity and humility at the heart of engaging and creating knowledge.
  4. Introduce students to how scholars frame inquiry, analyze problems, and create knowledge.
  5. Invite students to encounter the liberal arts and sciences as a capacious and constantly expanding intellectual community.
  6. Equip our students to articulate provisional analyses that reflect an openness to debate and differing values and a commitment to exploring knowledge and truth.

Citizen-Leaders for the 21st Century

Founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819, UVA occupies a unique role in the education of our nation’s citizen-leaders. Today’s students take on that mantle as a member of one of the nation’s leading Universities committed to the humanities, basic sciences, the arts, and social sciences..

The Curriculum

A dynamic approach to liberal arts education, each component of the College Curriculum has been meticulously designed to equip you with the questions you must ask, the skills you must acquire, and the approaches you must take in your future lives of engaged citizenship, purposeful vocation, and contributors to the greater good.

World Class Instruction

From the very moment you arrive on Grounds you will be learning from and interacting with acclaimed scholars and leaders across academic fields. Of note are the College Fellows, a rotating body of faculty who devote themselves to the Engagements' first-year experience.