Core Curriculum

At the Core of a Le Moyne Education

Le Moyne's Core Curriculum is central to the College's Catholic and Jesuit mission of educating students in a rigorous academic environment. The Core helps students acquire both foundational knowledge and intellectual skills essential to a lifetime of inquiry in professional and personal endeavors. The curriculum begins with discipline-specific courses, which fosters the development of critical communication and reasoning skills. The curriculum gradually incorporates interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary courses, in which students use their foundational knowledge to gain insight into current societal and global issues. Upon graduation, all students, regardless of major, will be able to actively engage complex problems and help create meaningful change in the world.

Courses and Requirements

If you would like to learn more about courses, requirements, and opportunities for the Core Curriculum, please see the Le Moyne College catalog.

Transfer Students

Like all matriculated students, transfer students must complete Le Moyne's Core Curriculum. The intent of the Core Curriculum for transfer students is to ensure the integrity of a Le Moyne education while acknowledging the importance of flexibility when transferring credits from other institutions. Transfer students should speak with Le Moyne's office of admissions which will help them to gain maximum credit for college work already completed.

Click here to learn more about transferring credit to Le Moyne.

Distinctive Elements in Le Moyne’s Core Curriculum

Le Moyne’s Core Curriculum ensures that all Le Moyne students receive a thorough education in the liberal arts. While its interdisciplinary approach and inclusion of mathematics and science reflect international trends in liberal arts education, the Core is distinctive in other ways.

1. A Thorough and Comprehensive Writing Sequence

Le Moyne’s Core Curriculum ensures that students have ample opportunity to develop their academic and career-relevant writing skills.

2. The Core’s Bookends

Le Moyne’s Core Curriculum includes both a first-year Transitions seminar (COR 100) and a senior Transformations capstone (COR 400). These two courses bookend the Le Moyne experience by introducing students to college in an exciting, intellectually provocative seminar and by preparing them for life after college in a capstone course that synthesizes their learning.

The first-year seminar introduces students to academic life at the college level, while also highlighting the value of a Jesuit liberal-arts education. Each seminar course is organized around a different "big idea" that is central to the faculty scholarly interests. By beginning their academic career with outstanding teacher-scholars, students are invited into the realm of intellectual inquiry.

Many Transitions seminars include field trips that deepen learning and build relationships. In addition to local excursions, several classes travel to New York City to visit museums and monuments related to their semester’s study. These “outside the classroom” experiences are an integral part of the Transitions course design.

Recent COR 100 seminars:

• Bloodthirsty Revenge and Heroic Compassion in Ancient Greece and Beyond   Dr. Deborah Cromley, Dept. of Foreign Languages
• Cultivation of the Self   Dr. Elliott Bazzano, Dept. of Religious Studies
• Hollers to Hip-Hop: Songs of Slavery and Freedom   Prof. Edward Ruchalski, Dept. of Visual and Performing Arts
• Monsters and the Monstrous Dr. Julie Grossman, Dept. of Communication and Film Studies
• Homelands Dr. Holly Rine, Dept. of History

The senior capstone courses focus on synthesizing the knowledge and self-understanding developed at Le Moyne and applying it to the world beyond college. They emphasize contemporary social, scientific, artistic, and technological ways of understanding and being in the world. Transformations courses always include interdisciplinary perspectives, which mirrors the common experience in many endeavors where collaboration between experts in various fields is the rule rather than the exception.

Recent COR 400 capstones:

• Knowledge, Power & the Obscure   Dr. Brett Young, Dept. of Philosophy
• Race & Racism    Dr. Jonathan Parent, Dept. of Political Science
• Absence & Presence    Dr. Kathleeen Costello-Sullivan, Dept. of English
• Nighttime Fantasies    Dr. Douja Mamelouk, Dept. of Foreign Languages & Literatures

The McDevitt Center sponsors some Transformations courses. These courses are taught by professors associated with the prestigious McDevitt Center, and often integrate public lectures.

1. DISCIPLINARY INQUIRY

Students will explore meaningful questions, both practical and transcendent, through study in the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.

Students will synthesize knowledge drawn from different fields of study (the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences).

Students will comprehensively evaluate issues, ideas, events, and works before making informed conclusions.

Students will produce coherent arguments in writing.

Students will prepare and present in a variety of contexts, as speaker and listener.

Students will analyze numerical or graphical information.

Using technologies integral to information access, students will identify, locate, evaluate, and responsibly use information that is relevant to a given problem.

Students will make reasoned ethical decisions by assessing their own moral values, recognizing different ethical perspectives, and thoughtfully analyzing ethical and moral dilemmas.

Students will investigate complex challenges involving cultural and social diversity, and the individual’s role in developing just solutions.