Students choose from a list of seminars designed to ignite their passion for scholarship, introduce them to what makes teaching and learning at Saint Louis University distinctive and transformative,
and integrate concepts and methodologies to explore complex questions.
SLU's Core is designed to foster interdisciplinary intellectual development. In the Core, students from multiple academic majors enroll together to learn with and from each other, leveraging the educational power of the multiple forms of intellectual, personal, and spiritual diversity they bring to their shared Core courses. Beginning with the Ignite Seminar, SLU's Core is designed to offer students structured exposure to multiple disciplines so that they can, in their Collaborative Inquiry course, demonstrate the degree to which they have achieved the second Core Student Learning Outcome: All SLU graduates will be able to integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines to address complex questions.
Ignite Seminar invites faculty from across the university to design a course around their distinct area(s) of expertise that serve as the lens through which students practice the Ignatian learning process—an integrative and personal approach to inquiry rooted in context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation. By focusing on how scholarly commitments are forged in dialogue with the personal and social worlds we inhabit, Ignite Seminars showcase the rich interplay of intellect and identity, wonder and certainly, rigor and play that characterizes academic inquiry rooted in the Ignatian ideal of care for the whole person (cura personalis). Ignite Seminar leaders also guide students as they identify and explore the questions that ignite their own sense of wonder and urgency.
Collaborative Inquiry asks students to work with their peers to apply concepts, methodologies, and ways of thinking from earlier Core and other coursework in order to explore complex questions without straightforward answers. These courses might focus on contemporary societal problems like climate change or racial inequality, or they might engage enduring questions about the nature of beauty, effective leadership, or the transcendent.
Click on the icons below for information on each Core component, including a description, teaching resources, proposal submission information, and artifact design/assessment when applicable.
Open Seminars:
Ignite Seminar
Open Seminars:
Collaborative Inquiry