NUS Bulletin AY2020/21

Students at Yale-NUS College share one powerful intellectual experience at the heart of their education: they complete an ambitious programme of courses known as the Common Curriculum. This linked set of courses stimulates a community of learning that is centred on fundamental questions in the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences.

Year 1 Semester 1 – YCC1111 Literature and Humanities 1, YCC1113 Philosophy and Political Thought 1, YCC1121 Comparative Social Inquiry, YCC1122 Quantitative Reasoning and YCC1133 Week 7: Learning Across Boundaries (LAB)

Year 1 Semester 2 – YCC1112 Literature and Humanities 2, YCC1114 Philosophy and Political Thought 2 and YCC1131 Scientific Inquiry 1

Year 2 Semester 1 – YCC2121 Modern Social Thought and YCC2137 Scientific Inquiry 2

Between Year 2 – 4 – 1 Historical Immersion module

By studying these topics together in a structured fashion, students build a common foundation of knowledge that covers many disciplines. They study questions of abiding human interest and of immediate contemporary importance in a deep and sustained manner, and they emerge with a shared set of references, allowing them to fall easily into serious intellectual conversation with one another. In this way, the Common Curriculum creates a lively campus environment of well-informed discussion and debate, which in turn deepens the intellectual development of each student.

Creativity and a sense of wonder are highly prized at Yale-NUS, as are sharp analytic skills and the ability to craft compelling arguments. In each part of the Common Curriculum, students are asked to articulate and defend their positions, beliefs, and assumptions. Through this training, they gain an unusually broad understanding of many fields and a robust confidence in their ability to deploy different modes of thought and analysis. The habits of mind and the intellectual abilities gained through this intense education serve them well as they confront the complex challenges of the 21st century. In addition to the practical benefits that this course of study provides, students often find that a liberal arts and science education offers more personal rewards. It can enrich their inner lives, lead them into friendships different from the ones that they might find elsewhere, and foster their ability to step outside the assumptions of their time and place. The Common Curriculum establishes a broader collegiate environment that helps individuals to cultivate their talents, consider their social responsibilities, and appreciate the humanizing influence of intellectual inquiry.

Teaching and Learning

In most Common Curriculum courses, weekly lectures offer students a sustained analysis of their topic while small seminars encourage more active learning. The seminars are held twice weekly in groups of 18 students. During those sessions the students may plunge into analyzing a data set or discussing the meaning of a challenging text. They may practice different forms of oral argument, from impromptu spoken responses to prepared presentations. The writing they do may consist of creative essays, research papers, or laboratory reports. Students learn to perform quantitative analysis and assess existing scientific evidence; they practice drawing inferences from data and presenting their findings in clear and effective visual formats, cultivating artistic as well as logical skills.

The Common Curriculum contains a degree of intellectual coherence rarely found in higher education today. The courses are coordinated, and each is carefully designed to challenge students from a wide range of academic and individual backgrounds. Students learn to distinguish distinct modes of inquiry and understanding, discover links between disciplines, and connect these insights to diagnosing and resolving problems of contemporary society.

Week 7: Learning Across Boundaries

More popularly known as “Week Seven”, this learning across boundaries course is a distinctive experiential feature of the Common Curriculum’s first year. Conducted mid-semester over a period of one week, students leave the classroom to share insights gained from field observation or meeting with practitioners in different fields and bring them to bear on contemporary problems. Students sometimes travel overseas to collaborate with international partners and experts.

Week 7 faculty lead broad thematic discussions bridging the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and faculty and students share brief but intense learning experiences that cross disciplinary boundaries and encourage creative thought. The week culminates in a day of presentations and performances demonstrating what has been achieved, and students return to the semester’s work refreshed with a renewed sense of purpose.

For up-to date details, please refer to https://admissions.yale-nus.edu.sg/curriculum/#common-curriculum.

Yale-NUS College is a dynamic innovation in the world of higher education. Its faculty are continuously engaged in the exciting process of formulating curricula which draws on the best from the tradition of liberal arts and science education, while rethinking old practices in light of pedagogical innovations, advanced learning technologies, and the needs of 21st century students.

The majors offered represent current thinking of the content, structure, and intellectual flavour of disciplinary study. They are unique as they are designed by faculty in collaboration with students. Students who enter the College are more than recipients of an education; they are crucial participants in the development of an education fit for a rapidly changing world.

Each major provides systematic training in a specific academic discipline or interdisciplinary area. Built on a foundation provided by the Common Curriculum, each major is designed to give students ample scope and flexibility to explore their interest in a chosen area of knowledge, while also providing direction and depth to their studies. The planning and selection of a major is guided by close personalized interactions with faculty advisors at Yale-NUS. In establishing the majors and helping each student map a path through them, faculty members consider not only the merits of each programme component, but also the way in which the components work together to build a coherent set of insights, skills, and knowledge for each student.

At the end of the second year, students are invited to select a Major and they will need to read a total of 11 relevant and related courses throughout their third and fourth year of study. Most majors would require  students to complete at least one ‘gateway’ course prior the student’s third year at Yale-NUS.

Every student at Yale-NUS is also required to complete a capstone project as part of the major. The capstone project is a year-long supervised endeavor that will develop initiative and independence in research, and represents two of the 11 courses constituting the major. Students will present the results of their work at the end of the fourth year in presentations to audiences of their peers in the field as well as to faculty and students in other disciplines.

Each major has a support network for students in capstone projects, including faculty-led seminars for sharing work-in-progress, laboratories, studio spaces, and resources for enhancing research presentations. Graduating students will develop self-confidence and skills development that comes from having successfully conducted an independent research inquiry.

For up-to date details, please refer to  https://admissions.yale-nus.edu.sg/curriculum/#majors.