Lake Erie College’s CORE Curriculum

A Component of the Empowerment: C2C (College to Career Initiative)

What is the Lake Erie College CORE Curriculum?

By personalizing your education, Lake Erie College empowers you to lead a life of significance. Our CORE (Checkpoints On your Road to Empowerment) curriculum is central to that aim. Elsewhere, this program may be referred to as a "general education." We believe you deserve much more—that's our CORE.
CORE steers you through courses that help define your LEC education and your life. Here, you will make connections by blending skills and knowledge from various fields. In unexpected and inventive ways, you will determine the meaning and value of your LEC experience. 
Along your route, you will encounter five checkpoints. Select a combination of courses from each checkpoint to reach your chosen destination. This aspect of CORE is the key to your personalized education at LEC.
Be empowered by your responsibility. CORE calls for serious students. By meeting our basic standards for writing, reading, speaking, reasoning and more, you will gain the flexibility to accomplish your personal goals. We leave choosing internships and careers up to you. CORE prepares you to make these choices with confidence.

Why is the CORE Curriculum important to my education and life? 

The CORE program promotes your success beyond the classroom. Expand your horizons, and embrace multi-disciplinary angles on learning. Use CORE as a scope to find and examine approaches to further study, internships and careers.
Adapt to a wide range of academic, internship and vocational experiences. Collaborate in a professional and civil manner. To assist you, CORE emphasizes critical thinking, communication skills, seeing alternative perspectives and open-mindedness. Round out your education at a small school with substantial student-faculty interaction. At Lake Erie College, close faculty mentorship during the CORE experience boosts your integrity and accountability along the way.
Did you know that every profession begs for communication skills? Our increasingly global and complex society needs cultural bridges between people and nations. LEC CORE contains checkpoints that allow you to build those bridges.

How does it work?

As you go throughout your academic experience, you will take a combination of CORE courses, electives, and classes specific to your major. The CORE courses are designed to be complementary to the rest of your academic journey and will, in many cases, directly integrate with your major courses. For instance, marketing majors must learn to communicate effectively in order to market.

We have five exciting and innovative “checkpoints,” which are described below.

Checkpoints On your Road to Empowerment

✔Join the conversation, developing effective communication and critical thinking skills.
✔Build bridges with international cultures, contributing to the world dialogue as you venture onto exciting new paths.
✔Understand the language of nature, applying quantitative reasoning and becoming part of the scientific process.
✔Explore the dynamics of people and their societies, discovering yourself as an individual, community member, and citizen.
✔Engage with the arts and humanities, appreciating and adding to the full range of human expression across time.

What types of courses are in the CORE?

You will find that you have lots of interesting choices for courses in each category. When you meet with your advisor to discuss your academic plan, you will have an opportunity to have an individualized discussion regarding which courses align with your goals and interests, or learn about something completely new to you.

CORE Groups or “Checkpoints”

✔Communicative and Critical Literacies (15 total credit hours)
Written Communication (2 courses—6 CH)
Oral Communication (3 CH)
Information (Computing) Literacy (3 CH)
Critical Thinking (3 CH)
✔Global Perspectives (11 total credit hours)
Second Language (2 courses—8 CH)
Multi-Cultural Perspective (3 CH)
✔Natural Sciences and Quantitative Reasoning (6 total credit hours)
Quantitative Reasoning (3 CH)
Scientific Inquiry (3 CH)
✔Personal and Social Inquiries (9 total credit hours)
Behavioral and Social Sciences (3 CH)
Civic Literacy (3 CH)
Philosophical and Ethical Reasoning (3)
✔Fine Arts and Humanities (9 total credit hours)
The Fine Arts (3 CH)
Literature (3 CH)
Historical Perspective (3 CH)

Final Thoughts Regarding YOUR CORE Curriculum

The LEC CORE requires that students take their responsibility to education seriously and that each student meet basic competencies in skills such as written and oral communication and quantitative reasoning, among others. At the same time, our CORE has been designed so that each student may tailor his/her coursework to his/her particular career and life goals. By allowing students to personalize their studies, the CORE aims to produce students who take ownership of their education and who are empowered to prepare themselves for the specific internships/careers of their choosing. The LEC CORE is flexible enough to allow students to choose their coursework deliberately, with a particular internship experience or career in mind.