The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has selected Oglethorpe University to receive a sizable three-year grant to support “Explorations in the Core,” an initiative to evaluate and implement innovations in the Oglethorpe Core curriculum.  The grant is awarded through the foundation’s Liberal Arts Colleges Program.

Oglethorpe’s award-winning, groundbreaking core curriculum has been a unifying academic experience for all students since its inception seventy years ago. The Oglethorpe Core is a sequential four-year general education program deeply rooted in the liberal arts tradition, and has been recognized by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and funded twice by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The “Explorations in the Core” program will enable Oglethorpe faculty to pilot variations of standard courses by testing new methods, texts, and pedagogies. The grant from the Mellon Foundation will directly support resources for planning, creating, and implementing the new courses.

“The Mellon Foundation grant will allow Oglethorpe to preserve our Core’s fundamentals, while incorporating new ideas, approaches, and perspectives,” said Dr. Charles Baube, professor of biology and director of the Oglethorpe Core. “Our goal is to ensure that this rigorous, interdisciplinary course of study in the arts and sciences remains relevant and continues to be a model for liberal arts instruction in the 21^st century.”

“This initiative is critical to the ongoing development of the Oglethorpe Core, and builds on seven decades of delivering an interdisciplinary education program that is at the heart of our university,” said Oglethorpe President Lawrence M. Schall. “While the Core has evolved significantly over time, its goals have largely remained the same:  to educate our students to make not only a good living, but an enriching life and a significant difference in their communities.”