General Education: Overview

A liberal arts education is both broad and deep, including wide exploration and focused study. This wide exploration is called general education. We organize the learning goals for general education into two categories: fundamental learning skills and liberal arts.

Burlington College challenges individuals to sharpen their thinking and learning skills and to gain wide knowledge in the liberal arts, so that they can develop as whole persons who think critically and creatively about the glut of information, problems, questions, and choices confronting them in a complex world.

We emphasize interdisciplinary inquiry in our Core Courses, identified in the Course Bulletin by the COR prefix, that examine crucial questions from the integrated perspective of two or more academic disciplines. These courses also stress clear writing and speaking, critical thinking, and valuing.

Learning Goals

Fundamental Learning Skills
We stress four fundamental learning skills—written communication, oral communication, critical thinking, and research methods—that students use across the disciplines. Proficiency is demonstrated through coursework and the Midpoint Portfolio. See Midpoint Portfolio and Fundamental Learning Skills in the Assessment Handbook (PDF/128 kb).

Liberal Arts
The College sets learning goals that embrace traditional elements of the liberal arts along with alternative goals more specific to our mission and history. Through coursework within the Core Curriculum and the disciplines, students address breadth in the following areas: creative expression, cultural awareness, historical consciousness, interdisciplinary study, media literacy, quantitative reasoning, responsible action, scientific thought, and social awareness. See Liberal Arts Goals, under Assessment Handbook (PDF/128 kb). Courses within the curriculum that adequately address each goal are identified.