The Core: Academics

The Core curriculum at Champlain College merges two distinct approaches to traditional academics-a comprehensive liberal arts program and interdisciplinary teaching and learning. The result is a rich experience that combines academic rigor, self-exploration, and local and global awareness, preparing twenty-first century students to live rich lives and enjoy satisfying careers.

First Year:
Individual and Community (12 Hours)

First-year students take Concepts of the Self (fall semester) and Concepts of Community (spring semester). They study in linked learning communities, cohorts of twenty students who share two Core faculty members. Employing the Inquiry Method, these small discussion-based classes emphasize critical thinking skills and reflective learning. Each Concepts course is paired with a Rhetoric course.

Fall Semester

COR-110 CONCEPTS OF THE SELF
How are contemporary developments in art, literature, psychology, and science challenging our traditional notion of what it means to be human? Students will have the chance to explore how these fields approach questions about humanity and individuality as they begin to build an interdisciplinary perspective on their own lives. They will study texts and artifacts from multiple disciplines as they learn about different ways in which the self is understood, lived, and expressed.

COR-115 RHETORIC I
Students learn rhetorical strategies to read and write in response to academic texts in various disciplines. Thematically linked to the first Core course, this course teaches students to engage with ideas and work through difficult texts by posing meaningful questions and analyzing both what a text says and how it says it. Students learn to use writing to think deeply and to communicate effectively through summaries, paraphrases, analyses, and critiques.

Spring Semester

COR-120 CONCEPTS OF COMMUNITY
In the age of instantaneous and open communication, economic globalism, and intercontinental travel, never has the question of the possibilities and limits of human community been more important. What are the practices and institutions that bind us together? What are the structures of communities, and how do these limit and define us as individuals? Exploring such questions through the disciplines of history, philosophy, and economics, students will develop an interdisciplinary perspective on community in the modern world and their place in it.

COR-125 RHETORIC II
Building on the skills learned in Rhetoric I, this second-semester course teaches students to develop and support opinions based on critical reading and discussion of interesting and diverse texts into effectively written and researched arguments. Students continue to learn strategies for writing essays that are clear, coherent, comprehensive, creative, concise, and correct for a specific audience and purpose.

Second Year:
The Western Tradition (12 Hours)

Through a sequence of four courses, students study the shaping influence of Western thought on science, religion, art and music, and politics.

Fall Semester

COR-210 SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS
The challenges of the 21st century demand an understanding of the nature and limitations of scientific thinking, the place of science within society, and its relationship to other forms of human thought and expression such as religion, art, and literature. This course will examine three major transformations of scientific ideas and their social and historical context, and will help students gain a broad understanding of the relationship of scientific ideas to other forms of thought and expression. Paired with COR 220.

COR-220 AESTHETIC EXPRESSIONS
What is art? What is beauty? How do works of visual art, literature, and music express both traditional and revolutionary ideas? This course will explore the nature of artistic and literary expression in the Western tradition. Students will analyze and discuss major accomplishments of Western culture to discover how the arts function both as the expression of cultural ideals and as a force of challenge and transformation. Paired with COR 210.

Spring Semester

COR-230 THE SECULAR AND THE SACRED
What does God have to do with anything? Everything, or nothing-both answers have deep roots in the Western tradition. This course is an interdisciplinary examination of the influence of religion and religious institutions on Western society from the earliest roots of the Judeo- Christian tradition through the modern era. The course focuses on the way religion and reactions to religion have shaped personal, political, social, and cultural institutions and practices in the West. Paired with COR 240.

COR-240 CAPITALISM AND DEMOCRACY
The 20th century saw the international triumph of the twin pillars of modern Western life: capitalism and democracy. The 21st century problems of globalism, environmental degradation, and terrorism, however, pose unique challenges to these institutions. This course will study the origins and development of our primary ideals of social organization. Students will actively engage questions about the value and future of capitalism and democracy while learning about its past. Is private property a fundamental right? What are the contemporary threats - internal and external - to democracy? In what ways do capitalism and democracy succeed and fail to provide for social justice? Paired with COR 230.

Third Year:
Global Themes (12 Hours)

Because international study is transformative and provides lifelong insight into the world in which we live, third-year students will take two courses in common (COR 310 and COR 320) and will also take two courses that explore a particular region. For the Class of 2011, the regional focus for the two-course sequence will be the Middle East; for the Class of 2012, the regional focus for the two-course sequence will be China.

Students who choose to spend a semester at a Champlain Abroad campus will take two place-based cultural courses in addition to COR 310 and COR 320. Students who choose to study abroad through a third-party program will be required to choose from a pre-approved list of institutions that have place-based cultural courses that will substitute for the two-course sequence. They will also take COR 310 and COR 320.

COR-310 GLOBAL STUDIES I: TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT
The expansion of the global economy and the widespread introduction of advanced technologies and practices across the globe have brought sweeping changes to the world. This course looks at the positive and negative effects of those changes, with particular attention to the interaction of technology, culture, and human rights.  In COR 320 students examine how people across a wide spectrum of cultures contextualize human rights, and in this course they study how economic development and advanced technology is affecting those cultures and what effect that has on the concept and practice of human rights.

COR-320 GLOBAL STUDIES II: HUMAN RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The very concept of human rights challenges us to learn about the different values people hold around the world, to try to make sense of values different from our own, and to wonder whether it is even possible (or appropriate) to think there are fundamental rights that apply to all people everywhere.  This course also challenges us to look at contemporary human rights issues as they are actually developing in the world around us.  Particular topics might include food and famine relief, rule of law issues, freedom of information and expression, gender equality issues, immigration, economic justice, or genocide. 

COR-330 STUDIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST **Most sections are capped at 20 students per section. Two exceptions - Crossing Borders:  Muslims and Morocco will be capped at 12, and Survivor Morocco will be capped at 30.

SPRING 2010 ONLY 

COR-330-01  DAR AL-ISLAM: UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD 

Gary Scudder
While Islam is the world’s second largest faith, with over 1.3 billion followers, it remains largely misunderstood. In this course students will explore the fundamentals of the Islamic faith, including its relationship to Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, as well as the role of the faith as a unifying force in a fragmented Islamic world. The course will also examine subjects such as women and Islam, toleration vs. extremism, and the rise and fall of the Islamic empires.

 

COR-330-02 CROSSING BORDERS: MUSLIMS AND MOROCCO  (Capped at 12 participants - Travel Course

Joanne Farrell

What does it mean to live and honor Islam in the modern world? Readings, films, and discussions will provide a brief historical and cultural background of the Arab world and Islam and prepare us for travel to Morocco over spring break. Accompanied by Moroccan students from the University of Rabat, visiting families, sharing stories, exploring the Medina, hiking in the Rif Mountains will force us to question and reevaluate cultural perceptions including stereotypes of Muslim women.

 

COR-330-03: Survivor Morocco

Cyndi Brandenburg and Mike Lange (team-taught – capped at 30)

What will it take to survive in the 21st century? This class explores the interplay between climate change and individual and cultural survival in Morocco. Using multiple disciplinary perspectives, we examine what it means to survive in the face of environmental change, from a single person through an entire population. By understanding survival in both human and environmental contexts, we illustrate how challenges faced by people in this region mirror challenges faced by everyone.

 COR-330-04: Politics and the Veil: Religion and Power in Contemporary Turkey

Alfonso Capone

Although overwhelmingly Muslim, modern Turkey was founded in the aftermath of World War I as a secular republic. We will examine Turkey’s struggle to balance Islamic social values with a constitutional commitment to secularism by investigating the recent attempt by Turkey’s Islamist political parties to legalize the wearing of the headscarf for women in schools, government offices, and workplaces. Is this the beginning of radical Islam, or the exercise of a fundamental human right?

 

COR-330-05 A TALE OF TWO CITIES: JERUSALEM AND BETHLEHEM

Richard Hunt
Side by side in the hill country of Israel and Palestine, these two cities constitute some of the most emotionally charged territory on the face of the earth. Fiercely competing claims among three of the world’s great monotheistic religions have swirled around this tiny territory for millennia. At the same time, however, it is not true that the region has been mired in unending conflict, because there have been—and continue to be—efforts at peaceful coexistence and conflict resolution. In this course, we will explore the history of this holy ground, its significance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the prospects for peace on Mount Zion, as scripture promises. Students who sign up for the course must be aware that they will be exposed to uncensored viewpoints from all sides of the conflict.

 

COR-330-06: Minority Report: Assimilation, Adaptation, or Isolation

Ken Wade

How do small, diverse religious, political and cultural groups in the Middle East co-exist with the cultures that surround, and often overshadow, them? This class is designed to deepen the students’ understanding of the inner lives of displaced individuals and the strategies they need to survive. Students will examine a variety of media (e.g., original documents, graphic novels, films, audio, art, etc.) setting the socio-cultural context of the region. 

Fourth Year:
The Capstone Experience (5 Hours)

The College Capstone is the culmination of a student's education at Champlain. Each student, with two faculty advisors, will produce a project that integrates the advanced professional work achieved in the major with the knowledge and experience developed through the interdisciplinary research and introspection gained through the Core courses.