General Education Core Curriculum

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For all our entering students-whether traditional, online, or Evenings and Weekends-Southeastern has designed one core curriculum that gives you a generous sampling of human thought and experience. By opening up your understanding of yourself, your faith, university life, academic investigation, and the career path you're being called to follow, this flexible and friendly program not only readies you for your major courses, but provides useful strategies for your whole life.

Freshman Through Senior Years
Here's how our General Education program works:

• Freshman year: start with a course for everyone-called Christ, Culture, and the University-and other courses you've chosen from the General Education categories
• Freshman and sophomore years: choose courses from the General Education categories, including another course for all students-called Personal Financial Stewardship-until you've met all the requirements
• Sophomore and junior years: take the Faith Integration course taught by your major department
• Junior and senior years: take courses in your major field

Christ, Culture, And The University
The course Christ, Culture, and the University, required for all new students, helps you find answers to questions that incoming students often raise:

A Christian worldview-what is it, exactly? How does it affect the way we Christians see creation, human nature, science, social responsibility?

If I feel that God is calling me to enter or continue in a particular field, why do I have to take courses that seem unrelated to my major?

Why is Southeastern's education called "liberal arts?"

What will help me navigate this university's academic requirements?

While I'm becoming an active member of an academic community-on campus or online-how can I also grow in faith?

The class sessions encourage you to pose your own questions as well. Since all the class sections use the same books and cover the same assignments, the other new students you know will be pursuing this quest along with you. Personality tests help you identify your individual strengths; your "success journal" helps you reflect on what you're learning. Lectures, discussion groups, reading lists, and interviews clarify the big picture: why you're here, and where you're headed.

Biblical Studies And Faith Integration
Because Southeastern is a Christ-centered university, six of your General Education courses-including Christ, Culture, and the University-will help build your faith. You will study topics that empower every Christian's work and witness: introduction to the Bible, introduction to theology, life of Christ. You also choose one more course-either principles of ethics, introduction to philosophy, or world religions, whichever most appeals to your interests and career path.

Just before you start courses in your major, the sixth religion course in faith integration helps you investigate questions that apply to the academic field you're about to enter: What role does faith play in this major field? How does Christian thought overlap with professional practice in this area?

The Traditional Arts And Sciences
If you studied only your major field and religion, you'd be missing many crucial pieces in God's great world of knowledge. Southeastern's General Education program invites you to sample everything: psychology, history, social sciences, fine arts, science, math, literature, instruction in good writing and speaking, and (for B.A. degree candidates) foreign language. Some courses are required for everyone; many categories, however, allow you to choose courses that complement your career interests.

Personal Financial Stewardship
This course will reward you for the rest of your life. Do you understand how to manage educational loans, credit cards, car payments, insurance, bank accounts, and budgeting? When you're ready to buy a house, will you be prepared to handle a mortgage? Have you begun setting goals and saving for them? How do you give back financially to support God's work in the world?

Once you realize that we are all stewards-people entrusted with the care of God's abundant resources-money matters become less of a hassle and more of an opportunity. By teaching you the methods to manage both individual and family finances and by directing you to sources in the library and online, Southeastern helps you make productive use of your gifts and your current supply, while planning ahead for the resources that will come to you in the future.

Life Application
Everything you learn at Southeastern enhances your understanding of the countless ways God speaks truth to us. Our General Education program opens up your perspective, so that in any situation-solving a problem, assessing new information, dealing with people-you can tap a range of responses.

How can I look at this through the lens of a different culture?

My psychology professor described an interaction exactly like this one.

I remember our lit class discussing a story with characters who faced a similar problem.

Tracking this series of events needs the logic I practiced over and over in math class.

What will help most right now may be the spiritual discipline of silence.

As you progress through our carefully shaped curriculum, you begin to realize how it works: Every facet of your Southeastern education offers you helpful new ways to receive God's message-and to use it for the benefit of others.

Catalog Description And Course Requirements