The Baker Core
College of Arts & Sciences
Choose Your Next Step
Reimagining the Liberal Arts
Today’s quickly changing, interconnected world calls for intellectual agility and the ability to recognize connections. The Baker Core reimagines the liberal arts. Instead of simply checking off requirements to meet credit hour totals, you’ll gain a comprehensive, broad base of knowledge through integrated courses that support a relevant theme of your choosing.
Whatever career path you take, you’ll be prepared. The Baker Core develops essential skills in critical analysis, writing, oral communication, and information literacy—the types of skills employers want to see in college grads.
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Benefits of the Baker Core
Foundation for Success in Upper-Level Courses
This broad base of knowledge allows students to recognize connections across academic areas and bring diverse perspectives as they explore their chosen theme. Knowledge gained from one year to the next lays a groundwork for success in the upper-level courses of their major.
Practical Preparation for Any Career
Employers value skills such as creativity and problem-solving as much as a job candidate’s undergraduate major. The Baker Core prepares students to solve unscripted, real-world problems across all types of industries and organizations.
Ability to Understand Complex Issues
This multidisciplinary approach develops active, forward-thinking problem solvers who understand that complex issues demand the complex responses only an innovative, cutting-edge liberal arts education can inspire.
Ownership of Education
Baker students carve their own path by selecting the courses they will use to explore their Baker Core theme. By taking charge of their education, they learn how to think, not simply recite facts.
How It Works
Take charge of your education by choosing the theme you’re most passionate about.
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The Baker Core |
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Students begin The Baker Core their first year. |
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Identities & Systems |
Power & Justice |
Sustainablility & Progress |
Exploration & Imagination |
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Students will then approach their chosen theme from the disciplinary perspectives listed below. |
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Creative Arts |
Creative Arts |
Creative Arts |
Creative Arts |
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Humanities |
Humanities |
Humanities |
Humanities |
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Social Sciences |
Social Sciences |
Social Sciences |
Social Sciences |
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Natural Sciences |
Natural Sciences |
Natural Sciences |
Natural Sciences |
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Identities & Systems |
Power & Justice |
Sustainability & Progress |
Exploration & Imagination |
Themes
Power & Justice
Examine how ideas of power and justice shape and challenge each other as well as their repercussions for societies, individuals, and the world.
Sustainability & Progress
Explore ways in which the world has historically moved forward socially and scientifically to determine how we currently imagine progress will be sustained into the future.
Exploration & Imagination
Build an understanding of the human quest for knowledge through innovation and discovery. You will be exposed to different realms of knowledge, be challenged to question knowledge, and be asked to reimagine how we gain knowledge.
Identities & Systems
Reflect on the ways that societies, communities, and individuals define themselves and how they organize their understanding of different aspects of the world.
Disciplines
The Baker Core integrates 24 credit hours of courses from the four discipline areas at the heart of the liberal arts tradition.
Creative Arts:
drawing, photography, creative writing, music, theatre
Humanities:
literature, international language, primary texts, religious studies
Social Sciences:
sociology, communication, psychology, gender studies, history, mass media
Natural Sciences:
human biology, genetics, kinesiology, math, physics, astronomy
You will also complete two seminars and one capstone.
- First-Year Seminar I and II provide a rigorous introduction to intellectual life and help you make the transition to college-level writing, critical inquiry, oral communication, and information literacy. These seminars focus on the critical analysis of big ideas and enduring questions.
- Interdisciplinary Capstone is taken during either your junior or senior year as the culmination of not only the courses supporting your chosen theme but also of your entire Baker undergraduate education. You will demonstrate how a liberal arts education has prepared you to understand the complexities and interconnectedness of a 21st century world.
Digging Deeper Into Themes
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Reflect on the ways that societies, communities, and individuals define themselves and how they organize their understanding of different aspects of the world. You will approach these concepts from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in order to explore these questions:
- How are identities constructed and expressed on an individual, societal, and global level?
- How do those identities inform and shape the systems (of knowledge, thought, politics, expression, technology, etc.) that order our world?
- How do the identities and systems that we engage with determine our worldview and values?
- How are the members of a particular identity treated by other individuals and by the systems around them?
- How are systems and identities defined and constructed across different disciplines?
- How and why do individual and collective identities and systems change over time?
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Examine how ideas of power and justice shape and challenge each other, as well as their repercussions for societies, individuals, and the world. You will draw on a range of disciplinary approaches to consider these questions:
- How have the concepts of power and justice been theorized and explored across different disciplines and time periods?
- How do issues of gender, sexuality, race, disability, ethnicity, class, and sustainability shape the dynamics of power and justice?
- How has power been challenged historically and in the present?
- How have concepts of political, social, and environmental justice evolved?
- How do structures of power support and inhibit the search for justice?
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Explore ways in which the world has historically moved forward socially and scientifically to determine how we currently imagine progress being sustained into the future. You will bridge the disciplines of history, ethics, creative arts, economics, and the social, political, and natural sciences to engage in these questions:
- What is progress and how do we quantify it so that we know when we have achieved progress?
- What is sustainability and why is it important personally and globally?
- What is the aesthetic expression of progress and sustainability?
- How do progress and sustainability interact as we seek desired outcomes?
- How are we defined by progress and sustainability? Do progress and sustainability add meaning to our lives?
- What are the social and scientific consequences of progress? Sustainability?
- How has technology encouraged or prevented progress, and is it sustainable?
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Build an understanding of the human quest for knowledge through innovation and discovery. You will be exposed to different realms of knowledge, be challenged to question knowledge, and be asked to reimagine how we gain knowledge. You will bridge the arts and the sciences to pursue these questions:
- How have humans historically gained knowledge and has that changed with technological advances?
- How does the role of imagination differ in artistic and scientific exploration?
- How do we verify our interpretation of the world through exploration?
- How does knowledge gained in different ways change our view of the world?