The New College Curriculum, launched in 2017, represents the first significant changes to general education at UVA in more than 40 years. Fully adopted through a landmark faculty vote in October 2019, the new curriculum strengthens UVA’s position as a leader in undergraduate education.
Through a bold and unique approach, the new curriculum is designed to better prepare students for an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
CORE PRINCIPLES
- Equipping students for lives as active, engaged citizens—enabling them to participate at all levels of democracy and in all realms of life
- Preparing students for jobs and careers—vocations that offer dignity, purpose, and meaning
- Opening students to the lifelong delights of curiosity, exploration, and discovery
- Engaging students with fundamental habits of mind—from wrestling with ethical questions, to fully appreciating the arts and aesthetics, to understanding empirical truths as scientists do, to engaging differences constructively in a world of people with different views, histories, and backgrounds.
Arts & Sciences students have many varied interests and aspirations. The new curriculum, an increasingly popular choice for undergraduates, addresses how and what students learn through an exploration of broad, relevant topics that encourages critical thinking. College students prepare for 21st Century lives by experiencing a variety of perspectives and by honing their writing, rhetoric, and computational skills to enable them to be successful in a variety of careers.
Curricular innovation in the College addresses head-on the question of the relevance of a liberal arts education. It develops the agile minds needed to compete in today’s environment and it differentiates and distinguishes the College from other institutions.