Ask Big Questions. Explore Them Together.
The most important challenges and ideas are rarely explored alone.
Through small, discussion-based courses, students engage enduring questions, examine ideas from multiple viewpoints, and encounter different approaches to knowledge. They learn to connect insights across disciplines, evaluate evidence, and apply their learning to contemporary issues.
Along the way, students develop more than subject matter expertise. They cultivate intellectual curiosity, critical judgment, and the confidence to engage complexity with openness and rigor. Through this process, they become more thoughtful learners, attentive listeners, and engaged participants in academic, civic, and community life.
At its heart, the Engagements is more than a curriculum. It invites students to ask big questions, explore new perspectives, and discover their place in the world.
Different Ways of Understanding
Many of the challenges facing individuals and societies cannot be understood through a single major. Questions about beauty, truth, identity, community, and responsibility invite multiple ways of thinking and many forms of knowledge.
Through the four Engagements pillars—Aesthetics, Empiricism, Difference, and Ethics—students encounter distinct intellectual traditions and methods of inquiry. They explore how people create meaning, evaluate evidence, navigate differences, and reflect on what it means to live well with others.
Together, these four pillars offer complementary ways of engaging ideas, experiences, and human concerns. They encourage students to approach important questions with curiosity, reflection, and an openness to learning from others.
