About the General Education Core
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has designed its General Education Core Curriculum Requirements (Core) to be consistent with its Academic Mission Statement. Completing these Core Requirements will result in your development as a person and as a professional who will be able to meet the intellectual and ethical challenges of responsible citizenship. UNLV's Academic Mission Statement emphasizes that a liberal education and professional studies are mutually dependent. The idea of a liberal education implies that to be well educated a student must develop a broad base of varied knowledge. In turn, such a liberal education will establish an invaluable foundation for more specialized study in one's major and for a life-long affinity for learning and intellectual development.
At the very beginning of your Core Curriculum course work at UNLV, you will take three "skills" courses, one in mathematics and two in freshman composition, which will develop your analytical and communicative skills and assure that you have at least a basic understanding of college-level mathematics.
The content of our Core Curriculum includes traditional liberal arts courses in the humanities which will enable you to understand the history and the varied richness of the cultures that have produced you and your era.; those humanities courses, typically in history, in languages, in literature, and in philosophy.
Our core also includes two courses in the sciences, and one course in logic, so that you will grapple with scientific methodologies, learn to reason both inductively and deductively and, understand the difference between evidence and premises.
In addition, the Core Curriculum at UNLV includes three courses in the social sciences, so that you will learn to analyze your world and the place of individuals and groups within cultures and societies.
Finally, our Core Curriculum requires that you take at least one course in the fine arts and thereby learn about at least one type of aesthetic appreciation.
