Core Education

Core Education is OSU's state-of-the-art, 21st-century-focused general education program. OSU's program prepares students alongside their majors to be proactive members of society who are ready to take on any challenge, solve any problem, and help build a better world. Core Education embeds career readiness and advancement, a signature element of our curriculum that students won't find anywhere else.

Core Education launches in Summer 2025 as a result of a multi-year curricular reform process that involved faculty, students, administration, employers, alumni, and community college partners. The university came together to center our reform efforts on our students and serving our land-grant mission to serve the people of the state, nation, and world. Core Education embeds high-impact practices, addresses the ever-changing needs of our learners and graduates in our global society, and promotes critical thinking, information literacy, social and environmental justice, interdisciplinary teamwork, and communication.

Solutions Focused

The goal of the Seeking Solutions category is to have students wrestle with complex, multifaceted problems, and work to solve them and/or evaluate potential solutions from multiple points of view. Overall, this is a course that is designed to deepen how students think about problem-solving in ways that transcend disciplinary-specific approaches. Specifically, we want to help students achieve transdisciplinary thinking - a method of studying complex problems that integrates ideas from diverse scholarly fields in order to deal with the inherent complexity of some urgent problems of the present human situation. Seeking Solutions courses will include interdisciplinary student teamwork as a core component.

Professional and Personal Success Beyond OSU

The Beyond OSU requirement is intended to incorporate career development into the curriculum, thereby ensuring that every student has the skills and knowledge needed to find meaningful work in their field or advance in their current career after completing their academic journey at OSU. The focus of Beyond OSU will be on career preparation activities that prepare students for their post-graduation goals. Beyond OSU will also help students connect their experiences to the career readiness and career advancement skills both employers and universities have deemed necessary to succeed in the working world. Beyond OSU strategically embeds the National Association of College Employers Career Competencies.

"One of the best ways to help students succeed is to give faculty the most up-to-date, evidence-informed pedagogical tools and support to teach. The implementation of Core Ed at OSU represents an unprecedented collaboration between multiple units across campus and is primed to change the very culture of higher education."

Dr. Regan Gurung, Associate Vice Provost and Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning; Director of General Psychology and Professor of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts

"We are redesigning Principles of Biology to strengthen the ties to the scientific process and undergraduate research experiences in labs, which increase equity and access proven to support participation and retention of students in science. We are also explicitly linking content to complex global issues and elucidating career linkages to help students make connects between the courses in their CORE Education."

Dr. Lori Kayes, Curriculum Reform Co-Chair, and Senior Instructor, Integrative Biology in the College of Science

Dan Faltesek — "Core Education builds key skills, reveals new possibilities, and nurtures curiosity. The connections we make between our majors, professional course work, and the world are some of the most important."

Dr. Daniel Faltesek, Core Education Curriculum Co-chair, and Associate Professor of New Media Communication in the College of Liberal Arts