First year students in the university’s second largest class ever are becoming more familiar with a new core curriculum, which comes after a year-long process of research, consultation, and feedback from faculty, students, and industry professionals.

History professor Allen Austin describes the main changes to the curriculum as “Number one, create more flexibility for students, and number two, create a more coherent experience within the core to make sure that there is a shared experience from which students can then build out.”

The new full core curriculum is easy to find online. It’s available to users under the “Students” tab, where one can select “Undergraduate and Graduate catalog,” and find “Core Curriculum.” There, students can see all the class options, unlike the “Advising Worksheet,” which doesn’t list all course options to satisfy each core area. Both the old and new curricula still maintain the same number of classes. However, the new core is designed to help students take classes that they have more interest in.

One main advantage of this new curriculum is that it focuses on teaching students to be able to write college papers, professors say. Before, students received the basic writing seminar within another class. For example, if students took religious studies 151, they were studying world religions with writing instruction threaded in through it. So they did double duty, making it harder for teachers as well as incoming students to learn college writing, said Core Director Dr. Mike Orleski, who wanted the writing seminar to be a standalone class.

Professors say they hope students are much more open to the new core and not see it as required classes to get out of the way but rather classes that they may not mind taking.

Students are finding it easy to understand and navigate the new curriculum. “I thought advising and scheduling would be very hard, but the new curriculum made it super easy to understand,” said freshman Emily Davis.

The new core is still at its beginning, and professors say there hasn’t been too much feedback thus far. Professors say the university will continue to refine and adjust the curriculum based on feedback from students, faculty, and staff, and they are waiting for areas for improvement to be identified. Officials will work to address the issues in the coming semesters, professors said.