Specifically designed for select students seeking an intense and integrated liberal arts education as they simultaneously pursue a specialized major, the minor in Core Texts and Enduring Questions brings faculty and students together to study great works of human thought not simply to learn something about them and their authors, but, more importantly, to learn something vital and enduring about ourselves as human beings. Believing that the dialogue between the best of ancient and modern thought gives us profound access to permanent truths about ourselves and our world, the CTEQ minor contributes to the integration of students’ specialized education by allowing them to hone their reasoning, writing, and speaking skills as they engage in a substantive, ongoing dialogue about timeless human questions and perennial human goals. Compatible with any major, this six (6) course, integrated minor also fulfills twelve (12) credit hours in Assumption’s Foundations Program. Students can thus pursue the CTEQ minor, which will appear on their official transcript, while they work their way through the Foundations Program, required of all students.
Inspired by Fr. Emmanuel d’Alzon’s, the founder of the Augustinians of the Assumption, vision of a truly dialectical and liberal education, the CTEQ minor combines four academic departments—Art History, Theology, Philosophy, and Political Science—in one concentrated minor. Exploring enduring questions about the nature of justice, beauty, human nature, and God, students in this interdisciplinary minor enter into meaningful dialogue with great artists and thinkers like Plutarch, Plato, Augustine, Michelangelo, Descartes, Pascal, Baudelaire, Tocqueville, and Pope Benedict XVI. Rooted in the idea that Core Texts are not the property of particular disciplines or particular periods or particular fields of study and drawing on the best aspects of Catholic liberal education, participants in the CTEQ minor form a distinctive learning community at Assumption University.
Students are encouraged to take ARH 160, THE 153, and POL 351 in their first two years of study and PHI 245 and two of the single book seminars in their second two years of study. For further information, contact Dr. Daniel Maher, Director of the Fortin and Gonthier Core Texts and Enduring Questions Minor.