A Common Bedrock The New Covenant College Core Curriculum

One of my favorite parts of the work that I get to do here at Covenant as the college’s chief academic officer is meeting our alumni. They are always gracious and grateful, eager to hear about our current faculty and students, and curious about what we’re up to. The summer before last, I spoke with one of our graduates, a philosophy and history double major in the early 2000s, who has since worked for a major foundation, helped create several businesses, served on two neighborhood associations, started a family, and served in her local church. In reflecting upon her Covenant education, she said appreciatively, “The power of the liberal arts is that it equips students to solve real-world problems in sustainable ways.” Like many of our alums, she is living an active, creative, and resilient life. Moreover, in a counter-cultural sort of way, she hasn’t been self-reliant. One glance at her LinkedIn profile makes it clear that she has done her best work in collaboration and interdependence with others. In all that she said, it was clear her rich life is distinctly seasoned by her love for our Lord Jesus and for her neighbors.

At the time of this encouraging and relevant conversation, my faculty colleagues and I were in the thick of a massive undertaking: the revision of the college’s General Education or “Core” Curriculum, a task that had not been undertaken since the 1990s! I was grateful to this alumna for reminding me of the stakes of our work: our core is the heartbeat of the Covenant College liberal arts education that deeply shapes our students. 

In spring of 2023, Dr. Carole Yue, and I gathered a team of volunteers from across the faculty to begin this daunting work. On the one hand, the eleven of us were immensely grateful for this assignment. The fact that Covenant has remained committed to a substantial and coherent core tells an important story. However, core curriculum reviews are often lengthy and contentious because they typically involve either the preservation or the diminution of a college’s most dearly held curricular values and commitments. In recent years, the trend at many colleges and universities has been to reduce the core or to diversify it into a choose-your-own-adventure menu of distribution requirements. As a core review team, we were wary of both perils. We especially valued the theological coherence of the Covenant College project, as well as its commitment to our model of academic discipleship. Remaining committed to the core’s role in faithfully forming our students' hearts and imaginations was foremost in our minds.

Looking back on that first year of our work, our committee is grateful (and proud) that we stayed focused on these first principles. In a recent conversation, Dr. Yue and I reflected on the importance of our decision to keep the college’s mission central, even while we aimed to adapt the new core to this generation of students. She reminded me that “although Covenant's mission has remained the same, this was an opportunity to discover how the core curriculum could support the college's mission in light of our current and future students.” Dr. Heather Hess shared a similar sentiment: “My sense is that we need an updated core in order to reform our mission-faithful, formative curriculum to better serve a new generation of students to live faithfully in a changing world. The heart of the core hasn't changed, but we need to make it more agile, more tangible, and more coherent—addressing it more holistically to the academic, professional, and cultural needs of this generation of believers.” More practically, our committee had a keen sense that—at a hefty fifty-eight hours—the current core might benefit from some prudent trimming. A modest decrease in the number of hours would allow for more flexibility in students’ schedules and hopefully give them more room for electives. 

Our revision unfolded in three stages. First, we sought to involve our broader community as much as possible. We conducted surveys with alumni and current students and held multiple listening sessions with current faculty. Looking back, Dr. Yue found this to be one of the most satisfying parts of our process: “I'm proud of how so many faculty contributed to and helped shape the project. I had so many delightful, thoughtful conversations with colleagues across the college as we worked through the revision process.” Next, we refined the Core Learning Outcomes, which not only provide clear aims for the curriculum, but also provide a pithy means of stating its overall purpose. Finally, working in smaller subcommittees, we undertook to recreate a number of longstanding courses like Christian Mind, Cultural Heritage of the West (CHOW), and Christ and Culture. 

Core Learning Outcomes

• Narrate the basic content and form of the Old and New Testaments and articulate the doctrines taught in them.
• Develop skills of inquiry, analysis, and imagination to support scholarship and solve problems.
• Demonstrate effective oral and written communication skills.
• Develop faithful cultural empathy and stewardship.

Our Core Learning Outcomes guided our work in key ways, but the new core would not have been possible without our much more substantial philosophical commitments that have long shaped the college and our curriculum. As someone who thinks a lot about words for a living, I like this English word “core” because it reminds me of its French cousin, coeur, which means heart. Both of these words also share the same root with the word “courage.” All of these resonances work well for explaining the purpose of Covenant’s core. First, the core is the heart of our shared educational enterprise. It’s the theological, philosophical, and intellectual engine that drives our work and gives us a sense of purpose as a collegiate community. However, the word also reminds us that we aren’t just thinking about the heart of a curriculum. We are also concerned with our students’ hearts and affections—that is, our project here has a large stake in helping each student to become a certain kind of person. Drawing on these foundational commitments, and especially the language of the college’s mission and our Philosophy of Education, the committee arrived at a beautiful statement of purpose: 

The core curriculum equips students with a foundational education: a common bedrock in the content and doctrine taught in Holy Scripture, a set of creative, analytical, communicative, and problem-solving skills that they can strengthen and deepen within their major studies, while cultivating imagination and empathy; as well as the ability, curiosity, and motivation to serve the global church and society. The core is designed so that students receive an interdisciplinary foundation of courses with which to understand their identity in Christ, to see the world with a biblical and reformed frame of reference, and to serve in a Christ-like manner—thereby preparing them to engage with culture, to examine and unfold creation, and to pursue biblical justice and mercy in community. The education we provide cultivates the skills, habits of thought, and affections that can constitute a lifelong disposition to serve the church, engage with culture, and love their neighbors. 

With this weighty purpose in view, our committee set out to reimagine some of our current core courses and to create new ones. Even so, we considered some components of the current core to be timeless and essential. Thus, our commitment to twelve hours of Bible and doctrine remains paramount; students will continue to take Introduction to Old Testament and Introduction to New Testament during their first year, followed by Doctrine I and II during their second year. Complementing and building upon this strong foundation, all students will take four new courses: Cornerstone, Creative Arts Foundations, Narrating the West, and Keystone. All students will continue to take Contemporary World History, as well as inquiry courses in social science, natural science, humanities, and culture. 

In my conversations with our team following the Board of Trustees’ unanimous approval of the new core in October 2025, they were most enthusiastic about our four new courses, which will be taken by all students. Looking at these new courses and how they build upon each other, Dr. Hess told me, “I'm proud of the story we're telling in the sequence as a whole, and the clarity with which each course fits into the overarching project, as well as the ways we are inviting students to take ownership, to resist a culture of distraction and disembodiment, and invest in a global, interdisciplinary community of faith and learning. Cornerstone, Creative Arts Foundations, Narrating the West, and Keystone are all doing this same work, but in disciplinary-specific and developmentally appropriate ways that will scaffold beautifully.” More specifically, Dr. Elissa Weichbrodt spoke of her excitement for COR 160: “I am most proud of Creative Arts Foundations. This freshmen-level course reiterates our community commitment to creation and embodiment by inviting students to explore the challenge and wonder of creativity in a biblical context. I believe this shared experience will help students grow their imaginations and develop creative practices of inquiry that will help them, regardless of their major.” Meanwhile, Dr. Cale Horne shared his excitement for the new class that will undertake the work done previously by the longstanding Christ and Culture course. Dr. Horne remarked, “I am particularly excited about the junior-level Keystone course. On the one hand, this course uses insights from the social sciences to offer students an analysis of current and emerging concerns in both local and global contexts: for example, poverty, migration, or technological change. On the other hand, Keystone illuminates the overwhelmingly positive role of the church historically and the church's potential to do good in the present. We're out to tell a frank, convincing, and optimistic account of the activity of God's people in an age when the witness of the church is more likely to be seen as the problem rather than the solution.”

Throughout our efforts over the past three years, as well as in all of the work that lies ahead to implement and refine this revised core, our team has viewed our labors as an exercise in stewardship. In this holy calling to academic discipleship, both in the core and in our major programs, we stand on the shoulders of those who have cared for the Covenant College project for more than seventy years. Even as we gratefully remember this great cloud of witnesses, we know that they would be quick to remind us that the true and ultimate source of these many good things is the LORD Himself, who has graciously invited us all to join Him in His mighty and joyful task of making all things new. As the psalmist writes, Non nobis, Domine! “Not to us, LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness” (Psalm 115:1 NIV). 

COR 150 Cornerstone (3 credits)
Taught by faculty from across the entire college, this course is a 3-hour iteration of our longstanding Christian Mind course. It invites incoming students to deeply consider their Christian and academic calling in the context of a Covenant College education. Students will be introduced to Covenant's rich theological tradition and be encouraged to embrace postures and practices that will enable them to make the most of their years at Covenant. It lays the foundation for the rest of the core curriculum and prepares students to take part in discovering and fulfilling their calling.

COR 160 Creative Arts Foundations (3 credits)
Taught by faculty in art, music, theater, and English, this first-year course reminds students that, as image bearers of the Creator, humans are themselves culture makers. Creating and interpreting cultural artifacts are essential components to being human and understanding past and present people groups. The course teaches students basic skills of viewing, listening, reading, creating, and otherwise engaging with cultural artifacts, providing students with a toolbox to approach and appreciate the various art forms they will encounter throughout their lives.

To support the development of these skills, the course will be tied to a non-credit requirement of attending a specific number of arts events per semester. 

COR 250 Narrating the West (3 credits)
Taught by faculty in English, philosophy, and political science, this course surveys many Western ways of imagining the world, identifying important ideas (ex. influential representations of humanity, God, and nature) that have shaped Western culture, and critiquing them from a Christian perspective. In telling the story of Western cultural development from the Ancient Near East to Postmodernism, the course will encourage students to develop and practice habits of interpreting non-biblical texts from a biblical perspective while being able to recognize the emergence of certain influential ideas at a given point in history. 

COR 350 Keystone: Fostering Shalom in Our Fallen World
Taught by faculty in economics and poverty & development, this course develops a foundation for empathy through increased understanding of the global and local significance of major social trends relating to the global church, global poverty, and international migration. A foundation for faithful cultural engagement will be developed by considering how students can communicate effectively regarding trends and support local organizations faithfully in ways that constructively promote human development.