Core Curriculum

The University of St. Thomas’ unique core curriculum offers students entrance into the great conversation unfolding across human history, a conversation about the fundamental questions we must all consider if we hope to live fully human lives. But it is about more than questions.

The wisdom our students discover—animated by faith and reason—and the skills they cultivate prepare them to serve society with conviction and become leaders known for integrity, insight, and courage. Students who complete the UST Core will have both the skills needed to succeed professionally in life after graduation and a true sense of the greater purpose of that life.

The Goals of the Core

1. Self-knowledge: To form in students an understanding of themselves as human persons endowed with intellectual and imaginative capacities and free will, so that they are empowered to pursue wisdom and to cultivate virtues, in which their humanity is fulfilled.
2. Intellectual Virtue: To cultivate intellectual skills that shape the life of the mind across multiple disciplines and enable a person to grow intellectually into the best version of himself or herself. Such skills take many forms. They could, for example, include, without being limited to, the ability to read and interpret, to draw conclusions from principles or data, to formulate accurate definitions, or to persuade others without manipulation or deceit.
3. Wisdom: To develop in students a reflective, philosophical habit of mind from the perspective of which the truths of all disciplines, of faith and of reason, can begin to be grasped as an ordered whole unified by underlying principles. This manifests itself in a healthy curiosity and a reverent wonder for truth in all its forms and in a keen interest in the underlying causes of things.

In the Core and as a University, We Are Committed To:

1. The Catholic intellectual tradition, a tradition that (i) understands human persons as rational, imaginative, free creatures capable of fulfillment through wisdom and virtue, (ii) prizes the intellectual skills formed by the liberal arts that have always been foundational in Catholic universities, and (iii) understands all of created reality as intelligible through principles and causes.
2. The dialogue between faith and reason, which depends upon the reflective, philosophical habit of mind our curriculum fosters.
3. The Basilian core values of goodness, discipline, and knowledge, virtues through which our students’ humanity is fulfilled and which enable students to understand the relationship between the different parts of human knowledge, making possible constructive collaboration across different disciplines.
4. The unity of all knowledge, insofar as the truths of all disciplines can be grasped as an ordered whole unified by underlying principles.
5. Forming our graduates to think analytically, communicate effectively, succeed professionally, and lead ethically.