ODU Core Curriculum

The Core Curriculum 

ODU's liberal arts curriculum, taken by all undergraduates, is a series of courses that provide a unifying academic experience throughout each student's academic journey.

By emphasizing lifelong learning, critical thinking, effective writing and ethical judgements, the liberal arts curriculum provides students with a solid foundation for careers and life experiences. It is this foundation that will make students valuable and competitive in today's changing job market This curriculum includes a series of four Core seminars, each thematically based on the Dominican intellectual and religious tradition:

Undergraduates take one seminar each year in a four-year academic career.
 
  • First-year Seminar: What Does it Mean to be Human?
  • Second-year Seminar: What is the Common Good?
  • Third-year Seminar: What is Justice?
  • Fourth-year Seminar: What Truths have we Learned?

In the Core seminars, students draw from all of their courses to engage in thought-provoking interdisciplinary discussions, readings and experiences. These seminars ensure that both students and faculty continuously reflect on aspects of ODU’s mission statement and Dominican values throughout the undergraduate curriculum. The seminars collectively provide students with a distinctively Dominican education. They exemplify the university’s rich history and mission and are inspired by the four pillars of Dominican life: prayer, community, ministry, and study. A current description of the Core program and liberal arts curriculum requirements can be found in Ohio Dominican University’s Academic Catalogue.

In the first-year seminar students study humans as embodied, social, spiritual, emotional, rational beings. The Gospel of Matthew is used in the first-year seminar, specifically due to the fact that St. Dominic himself carried it with him on his journeys, providing students the opportunity to connect with and follow in the footsteps of the founder of the Dominican order. 

In the second-year seminar students study community and the common good as they examine the role of individuals belonging to multiple and diverse communities. Students have the opportunity to translate knowledge into action through a community service project.  The common good is defined as the sum conditions of social life which allow social groups (or communities) and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to fulfillment of their basic human needs and rights.   

In the third-year seminar students study the role of justice in providing each person what he or she is due. Courses may include the following forms of justice among others: divine, distributive or social justice, retributive or corrective justice, compensatory, utilitarian and restorative justice.  

In the final year the seminars extend the discussion of human nature, the common good, and justice to raise the question of what truths we have learned. The common texts include the New Testament Book of Matthew and The Idea of the University by Cardinal Newman. 

Each year, the university chooses the theme of one of the seminars as the focus point for the year. Ohio Dominican University’s Center for Dominican Studies organizes an annual series of faculty speakers, selected from across the university’s disciplines, to speak on the theme by sharing unique insights from their field.

From 2013 to 2018, the university-wide Core Conversations program, supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, extends the exploration of the Core Seminar concepts to the entire campus community and the public by developing programming for one theme per year. Previous speakers/books include: 

  • Wil Haygood, The Butler: A Witness to History (September 2013)
  • John Dear, Practicing Nonviolence in a World of War (April 2014)
  • Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (September 2014)
  • Conor Grennan, Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal (February 2015)
  • Timothy Shriver, Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most (September 2015)
  • Wil Haygood, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court (February 2016)
  • Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (November 2016)
  • Father Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (February 2018)

Dr. Kelsey Squire
Professor of English
Core Program Director
squirek@ohiodominican.edu
614-251-4287