BC Experience
 

Brevard Common Experience

The Brevard College general education curriculum provides a comprehensive liberal arts foundation that grounds students in effective communication skills, critical thinking ability, and a sense of personal and global responsibility.  Believing education to be a trust, the faculty invite students into meaningful interaction through collective academic experiences, interdisciplinary dialogue, and the acquisition of essential skills and knowledge. 

As a means to meet this mission, Brevard College has developed an innovative two-tiered general education program consisting of common experience courses and distribution requirements.

The Brevard Common Experience (BCE) courses create an exceptional opportunity for students to connect with their cohort and to experience the value of an interdisciplinary approach.  The BCE course requirements are:

I.   BCE 111 – “Perspectives” 3 semester hours

II.  BCE 211 – “Environmental Perspectives”  4 semester hours
An interdisciplinary study of the past, present, and future of forest an driver ecosystems, this course looks at ecology and natural history, effects of human activities, and environmental economics, ethics, and policy.  Lectures, panel discussions, laboratory exercises, and field trips are offered. 

III. BCE LINC – Learning IN Community (LINC) 6 semester hours
To meet this requirement, students enroll simultaneously in two courses from different academic disciplines (English, Communications, Philosophy, History, and Religion, for example) that are sometimes connected by a predetermined College-wide theme (“Sustainability:  Awareness into Action” in 2008-2010).  Students participating in LINC courses also attend campus events related to the theme.

The primary goals of intertwining the two courses with each other and with campus events are to (1) engage students in community learning and cross-disciplinary analysis, (2) foster students’ abilities to apply humanistic studies and analysis to significant current issues, and (3) create a shared intellectual culture related to humanistic studies at the College

LINC Testimony of Jubal Tiner

Examples of LINC courses previous offered:

  • New Testament Studies & Anthropology
  • Ethics & Literature
  • African-American Literature & African-American History
  • Environmental Theology & Environmental Literature
  • American Christianity & US History
  • Western Civilization & Western Music
  • Mass Media and Mass Com & First Amendment

IV. BCE 411 – BC and Beyond    3 semester hours
As the culminating course of the Brevard general education curriculum, this course seeks to help students continue the life-long process of synthesizing knowledge, skills, and understanding acquired at Brevard College into habits of thought and action.  Through a continuum of levels – personal, community, cultural, and global – the course will address such compelling topics as Excess and Simplicity; Technology and the Future; and Culture, Conflict, and Resolution.  The course offers a mixed-format structure:  lectures, research, presentations, films, and open dialogue.