The Core Pathways Initiative is a self-selecting option for students who want to follow a thematic pathway in their navigation of Core Curriculum requirements. Students enroll in a series of four modules (7-week course units of 1.5 credits each), offered in six different disciplines, each with a different lens on wicked issues which we define as being complex enough in nature to require multiple disciplines to inform discussion around them.
Students can take up to four distinct modules in a single year. When students have taken two modules in the same discipline they will have satisfied a core requirement. Students may combine two modules from different disciplines as a 3-credit interdisciplinary elective.
In addition to the course modules, students will be part of a larger intellectual learning community, with a set of opportunities to make connections across disciplines. This includes participating in pathway integrative days and having access to a “Virtual Commons”, a robust set of resources providing access to a range of disciplinary lenses on core concepts germane to the pathway. The Core Pathways Initiative strives to be purposeful, interdisciplinary and self-directed. The following pages will walk you through our inaugural year focusing on Climate Change, and the three pillars that helped craft the experience.
Core Pathways
Core Pathways was incubated by the Red House and created in coordination with Designing the Future(s) Initiative.
Designing The Future(s) of the University is an integrative initiative to engage the university community in an exploration of issues facing higher education and to actively experiment with new ways to deliver Georgetown’s signature education.
The Designing the Future(s) Initiative supports curricular innovation as an inquiry into new ways for Georgetown’s educational practices to align with its institutional identity and values. This work is especially urgent in the context of the institution’s social obligations to serving as diverse a student body as possible, while living out its multiple missions in a competitive global landscape.
Committed to equity and a robust conception of educating the whole person in the 21st century, Future(s) uses iterative research and design processes to explore the expanding contexts of liberal and professional education, the well-being of students and faculty, and the ways in which higher education can renew its greater purposes and ultimately serve the common good.
