9 Ways of Knowing

primefactor
Thu, 24 Feb 2005 00:25:49 +0000

The good thing about the 9 ways of knowing is that they’re SO flexible. These classes can count for your major or minor as well. For example, as an econ student, I fulfilled my history (Economic history of the US), social analysis (macro), Reason and Value (foundations of political economy), and quantitative reasoning (lots of math) just by taking classes I had to take anyway for my major. For your Lit requirement, any class in English or Comp Lit qualifies, and for Cultures, any class in anthropology (in addition to a list of approved classes in other departments). So broad statements about professors and workload can only be made to the extent they can be made about the entire university (in other words, they range from worthless to amazing-like-you-never-thought-school-could-be : ask around, check culpa.info, and sit in on a lecture or two before deciding)!


So your core experience will be uniquely constructed based on your interests and how you want to explore the liberal arts. The goal of the 9 ways curriculum is to encourage students not only to explore other fields, but to discover other ways of approaching their major interests. http://www.barnard.edu/provost/gerapprcourses.html for a list of courses–I think lab science is the most restricted of the requirements, and it’s kind of a pain.

With the exception of first year classes, then, the core requirements are just normal classes in other departments, at Barnard or at Columbia.

The bad thing is that if you like a unified core base of College-wide study, it won’t be found in the 9 ways. There is some degree of class unity built through the mandatory first year seminar and writing course, which I know nothing about personally (since I’m a transfer). This also has its good and bad. Your circle of friends won’t all get every reference brought up in a conversation, but the conversations will have more diversely grounded perspectives than perhaps otherwise. If you want to have a completely traditional liberal arts curriculum, you can take things like philosophy and classics to meet these requirements.


I don’t know about that particular program. I’ll ask a pre-med major friend of mine what she knows about it. All I know right now is that Barnard does have a pre-med track in the biology department. But you can always take extra courses as long as you can handle the work.


I promise I will return with more info about premed and an answer to #3 tomorrow!