Shared Futures

United States Military Academy

The general education requirement at the United States Military Academy consists of a core curriculum of 30 courses.  These courses, listed in TAB A, consist of four math, two chemistry, two physics, three engineering, two computer/information technology, four history, three English, two foreign language, one American politics, one international relations, one economics, one geography, one psychology, one military leadership, one philosophy, and one constitutional law.  Students are required to complete in good standing all of these courses before graduation.  Depending upon the major selected, students may substitute the three engineering courses and the course in information technology for more advanced courses within their major program of study.  Completion of the 30 core courses represents the student’s professional major—that is, the set of courses deemed essential for success as an officer in the US Army. The core curriculum’s design corresponds to the ten Academic Program goals established by senior academic leaders at the Military Academy.  Annual enrollments in the core courses depend on the size of the year group, but typically range between 900 and 1100 students; a small proportion of students are given opportunities to pursue advanced studies in these areas through enrollment in alternative courses.

Our global reform efforts seek to integrate the disparate strands of cultural education located throughout the core curriculum into a concentrated focus on global awareness.  Based on a comprehensive review undertaken by the Curriculum Committee in 2004 and validation of a lack of curricular integration from a report by the Cultural Perspective Goal Team to the Assessment Steering Committee in 2005, we seek to modify the existing curricular in several distinct ways.  Presently, students are required to complete two semesters of a foreign language, two semesters of world history, and a semester of geography, none of which are aligned in ways that reinforce students’ global learning activities.  We are considering the feasibility of expanding foreign language instruction from every other day to daily interaction; the added contact hours would provide students with the equivalent of three semesters of language instruction within the two semesters.  Moreover, the History Department next year will shift from general world history to a two-semester comparative history sequence that will provide the regional context for students’ selected foreign language.  Furthermore, the core geography course has added a block of lessons on culture to place a greater emphasis on the importance of culture in physical space and global learning. 

The proposed strategy realigns components of the core curriculum to place a much greater concentrated and integrated focus on global learning without requiring the addition of new core courses to students’ demanding load.  The core remains intact, along with the desired outcome goals of students’ professional major.  However, we seek to reinforce linkages between language and culture in ways that are presently overlooked.  We seek also to expand the emphasis on global awareness through the majors programs by encouraging departments, where feasible, to add foreign language elective courses to their study-in-depth programs.  Furthermore, we created in August 2005 a regional studies minor, which consists of five required courses—two in foreign language and three other upper-division electives in regional and cultural studies.  We have also expanded our study abroad program, with opportunities for students to spend up to a semester studying in another country.