The Core Curriculum

Our Become that Someone Core Curriculum is the heart of your SFU education.

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    • Become that Someone
    Core Curriculum

    Mission

    Our Become That Someone Core Curriculum guides all Saint Francis University students to develop character, excel in their fields, build communities, and act as globally engaged citizens. Through our Franciscan tradition, the curriculum cultivates a life of constant renewal of mind, heart, and soul fostering spiritual, physical, and intellectual formation.

     

    Vision

    Our Become That Someone Core Curriculum inspires Saint Francis University students to recognize that a better world is possible and provides the tools and foundation to build this better world by addressing the challenges faced by humanity.

    Goals of the Core

    • Goal 1: Excel and Lead in your Field
      • Develop research, quantitative, and analytical abilities. 
      • Build effective communication skills.
      • Respond to situations in work and life with innovation, flexibility, and problem solving.
      • Integrate Franciscan values and ethical frameworks into one’s personal leadership style.
    • Goal 2: Build Character and Community
      • Demonstrate an appreciation of Franciscan values, Catholic Social Teaching, and other religious perspectives, to enhance oneself and enrich the community for the common good of all.
      •  Demonstrate commitment to holistic self-care, including spiritual, physical, emotional, and financial well-being
      • Analyze and navigate economic, social, and political systems essential to building and strengthening community.
    • Goal 3: Form a Better World
      • Become an informed, open-minded citizen who respects the importance of inclusion and accepts the inherent dignity, individuality, and freedom of every human person.
      • Embody a spirit of global solidarity, essential for peace and prosperity, for people and the planet.
      •  Practice civic responsibility to address global challenges collaboratively and ethically.

    The Curriculum

    SFU designed its core curriculum to follow the high-impact practices recommended by the AAC&U including integrative knowledge, analytic inquiry, critical thinking, engagement with diverse perspectives, ethical reasoning, quantitative reasoning and communicative skill in all forms, ideas, and arguments from different frames of reference, applied learning, integrative experiences, and civic and global learning.

    Three Levels of the Core

    The classes in the core curriculum are divided into three main categories to help clarify their purpose and progression: foundations, connections, and integrations. 

    • Foundations (Level 1)
    • Connections (Level 2)
    • Integrations (Level 3)

    • Foundations courses are the nucleus of the core curriculum. Here you will build the basic elements needed for success in college courses and beyond. These courses include transferrable skills such as written and oral communication, information literacy, quantitative reasoning, and critical thinking. They also include an introduction to Franciscan values and service to others.

    • Connections courses allow you to strengthen your foundation skills while building the next educational level by exploring different disciplines. They encourage a breadth of knowledge while further developing habits of mind, methods of inquiry, and ways of understanding through different frames of reference and traditions of each discipline. Courses in this category provide you with an opportunity to apply your skills, knowledge, and diverse ways of thinking to problems and issues challenging us today and in the future. 

    • Integrations courses encourage you to apply the knowledge and skills gained throughout the core curriculum to your future career and life. They help to contextualize what you have learned in the college curriculum. They encourage you to consider diversity and social justice, democracy, global awareness, and civic engagement. Here you can find opportunities to develop stewardship, leadership, or advocacy while guided by Franciscan values and problem-solving skills you have built. Integrations courses include research, community engagement, experiential learning, internships, and problem-based learning.

    Common Themes Throughout All Three Levels of the Core 

    • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, tied directly to Catholic Social Teaching, serve as common themes reflected in many of the core courses. 
    • Transformative Development is a new approach to the wellness concept that addresses physical, spiritual, emotional, and financial literacy. 

     

    Fall Trees on campus

    High Impact Practices

    We designed the Core Curriculum around the high impact practices recommended by the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

    You'll get ready for your future career through:

    • Capstone courses and projects 
    • Collaborative assignments and projects 
    • Common intellectual experiences 
    • Diversity/global learning 
    • ePortfolios 
    • First-year seminars and experiences 
    • Internships 
    • Learning communities 
    • Service learning, community-based learning 
    • Undergraduate research 
    • Writing-intensive courses 

    Questions about The Core?

    Irene Wolf

    Irene Wolf, Core Program Director 

    Phone: 814-471-1173  
    Email: iwolf@francis.edu
    Location: Science Center 111

    The Story Behind "Become that Someone"

    No story embodies the lesson of servant leadership quite like that of the friendship between Saint Francis grad Maurice Stokes '55 and his Cincinnati Royals teammate Jack Twyman. It is such a powerful example that the university adopted "Become that Someone" as its slogan to keep the lesson ever present in students' minds.

    Stokes and Twyman

    “Maurice was on his own. Something had to be done and someone had to do it... so I became that someone.”

    —Cincinnati Royals teammate Jack Twyman

    Maurice Stokes was an All-Star in his brief three-year professional basketball career, but during a 1958 game Stokes fell hard. He was knocked out and slowly drifted back into consciousness. Despite the severity of the fall, he was sent back into the game. Days later, Stokes suffered a series of seizures aboard a plane traveling to a playoff game. Paralyzed and unable to speak, the medical bills for his round-the-clock care became insurmountable for his mother.  Teammate Jack Twyman stepped up to became Maurice's legal guardian and assumed responsibility for his friend's medical expenses for the last decade of Stokes' life.