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Sweet Briar’s leadership core curriculum provides a foundation in the values, skills, knowledge, and perspectives that are essential for women’s leadership. The core curriculum is designed to develop in students the habits of lifelong learning, innovation, ethical conduct, problem solving, collaboration, and empathy.

Our core curriculum is structured to help students move from ideas to actions. In the first course, students explore the ways in which problems are identified and ideas are generated. In following courses, students address important questions connected with our interdisciplinary centers of sustainability, science and technology, and creativity. Core courses help students develop a firm ethical grounding, an ability to sift through evidence, and an understanding of diverse culutral and disciplinary perspectives. In two final core courses, students realize their potential by shifting their focus from the conceptual to the concrete, undertaking group projects aimed at solving the problems that we all face. The development of communication skills is woven through the core.

At Sweet Briar College, we value innovation-not perfection. We understand that the process is often as important as the result, and that great ideas are grown through experimentation. We see occasional failure as in indispensable step in the experimentation process, a step that demonstrates an appropriate level of risk in striving for innovation. Our curriculum invites students to look squarely upon the problems that our world faces, and it empowers women to craft the solutions that our world needs by creating an inclusive environment, one that seeks out diverse perspectives to rise to diverse challenges.

Core courses will raise questions, identify interdisciplinary connections, and encourage intellectual open-mindedness. Because the core curriculum is compact, composed of just ten courses, students have space and time to explore what truly excites them, by individualizing their academic program.

Courses

• CORE 110 - Design Thinking
• CORE 120 - The Mindful Writer
• CORE 130 - Women and Gender in the World
• CORE 140 - Sustainable Systems
• CORE 150 - Expression and the Arts
• CORE 160 - STEM in Society
• CORE 170 - Decisions in a Data-Driven World
• CORE 210 - Contemporary Ethical Questions
• CORE 220 - Leadership Realized I
• CORE 310 - Leadership Realized II

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