Integrated General Education and the Extent of Interdisciplinarity: The University of California-Merced's Core 1 Curriculum

The University of California-Merced's Core 1 has potential to foster genuine interdisciplinary thinking by asking students to conceptualize knowledge across fields of inquiry. Core 1 introduces students to the range of scholarly inquiry at the university all in the span of one semester-long, writing-intensive, integrated curriculum that encourages them to make their own connections among the disciplines while practicing both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Examining Core 1 in the context of general education literature affords new insights into tensions between general education course delivery and content and the meaning of general education for contemporary university students.