The Avenue Experience is a college-wide program that inspires the work at Saint Mary’s both in and out of the classroom. The Avenue Experience provides the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that prepare Saint Mary's students to lead with distinction, and flourish in their communities and careers. The Avenue competencies are developed across campus through curriculum, co-curriculum, student support services, residential community, faith formation, and spiritual life.
The Saint Mary’s College General Education Curriculum serves as the unifying educational space where students begin to develop the college-wide competencies associated with the Avenue Experience. Completed over the course of four years of study, the program strives to provide foundational learning experiences to all students that reflect our philosophy and purpose as a Catholic, women’s, liberal arts institution, embracing the well-established principle that the breadth provided by general education complements the depth provided by a student’s major.
For students, this makes learning both more intentional (in knowing where a particular educational experience is supposed to take them, they can notice more along the way) and more integrated (they can see both before and during their education how each part of the curriculum assembles into a larger whole).
With these principles as a guide, our general education curriculum is built around clusters of courses in key areas associated with broad learning in the liberal arts in a Catholic women’s college context.
Below is a brief description of the goals of each area of focus and links to courses available in the Fall semester for first year students.
In your Creative and Artistic Expression course, you’ll engage in hands-on artistic practice. Whether through visual art, music, theater, dance, or creative writing, you’ll develop your creative voice, build confidence, and deepen your appreciation for the arts. See available courses.
Real-world issues don’t fit into a single subject. Your Interdisciplinary Thinking course helps you make connections across subjects, analyze issues more deeply, and question assumptions that arise when you only think from one perspective. See available courses.
The First Year Seminar (FYS) uses high-impact education practices, with an emphasis on teaching dialogue across differences, to engage with an enduring question or contemporary challenge, approached from the field of the faculty member teaching the course. Students will meet the following learning outcomes:
See available First Year Seminar courses
As a Saint Mary’s student, you’ll work toward proficiency in writing throughout your college career. Your Basic W Course is designed to help you prepare for four years of learning as well as a life of writing beyond Saint Mary’s. Your writing efforts will be more focused, however, at two stages of your career: shortly after your arrival on campus and as you fulfill your major requirements for graduation. See available courses.
A number of courses throughout the College, known as W courses, are designed to help you strengthen your writing. As you’ll see below, these courses represent various disciplines. Each course introduces you to the subject matter of a particular field (philosophy or intercultural studies, for instance; tandem courses explore the connections between two fields, such as history and literature) as well as to the craft of writing.
Many students find it helpful to take a W course in a field that engages them. They discover they enjoy writing and make more progress when the course topic is one they especially want to explore. All W courses fulfill a general education requirement and provide the opportunity to earn the Basic W. Students should feel no pressure to fulfill the basic W with their first course. In fact, many students choose to take extra W courses, even when not required to do so.
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