Published 29 April 2008
Provisional overview of courses being developed for the Academic Core, click on magnifying glass to enlarge
The Academic Core of the AUC programme is designed to ensure that you develop strong academic skills in a number of essential areas, and to prepare you for your choice of theme and major. You take Academic Core courses across all three years of your programme, ensuring an ongoing development of your skills.
A special feature of the Academic Core are the Big Questions courses: there are four courses offered, from which you choose a minimum of one in your first year. These courses approach ‘big questions' in science and society from a variety of different and challenging perspectives, and the aim is to stimulate debate from day one of your programme. You are encouraged to reflect on your own position with respect to these ‘big questions', and how you can personally engage with them. They also help to inspire and prepare you for your choice of theme and major.
Scientific reasoning is an essential skill when debating ‘big questions' and it is the focus of this course, in which you analyse and discuss patterns of reasoning and the validity of reasoning and information flow in a variety of contexts. All AUC students have to take this course.
You are expected to enter AUC with good written and spoken English, but specific training is planned early in the Academic Core in order to help you with understanding and writing texts at an academic level, giving presentations, and participating in academic debate. Later in your programme you follow a more advanced course that will help you prepare for your capstone project and Bachelor thesis. All AUC students (including English native speakers) are expected to take both courses.
In today's globalising world, language skills are essential. You are, therefore, expected to reach a certain level of competence in a foreign language during your studies at AUC (other than English and your native language). The current options include courses in Dutch, French, German and Spanish (more options may become available).
You are expected to enter AUC with good skills in maths (up to examination level at secondary school, with a good grade) but, depending on the more advanced courses that you want to include in your individual study programme, you will take up to two maths courses as part of your Academic Core. These courses cover subjects such as research methods and statistics, calculus and linear algebra.
AUC is an international institution, located in a world city, and preparing its graduates for a globalised world. This course is designed to open your eyes to issues arising from a multicultural context, and to equip you with some useful intercultural communication skills. You are also given a brief social and political orientation on the Netherlands and aspects of Dutch culture.
An optional course in the Academic Core is Chinese Studies which is given in January 2010.
Source: AUC
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