Visitors walk the labyrinth, a 40-foot circle containing a winding path, at Duke Chapel. More...
Philosophy
Trinity College of Arts & Sciences aims to empower students by teaching them to reason and to empathize. The cornerstones of our curriculum are writing and research. Our students develop intellectual skills, cross-cultural fluency, and civic and moral responsibility. They learn to generate, evaluate, integrate, and apply knowledge, and to become active agents for social and community change. Our faculty mentor as well as teach, and students are engaged participants in the creation and dissemination of knowledge.
Our approach to undergraduate education is based on the understanding that intellectual, personal, and social maturing is a progressive process, involving transitions that are often transformative.
A core value of a Duke education is advancing Knowledge in the Service of Society. Courses that emphasize knowledge and service appear throughout the undergraduate curriculum, including service learning courses whose 1,000 enrolled students offer 20,000 hours of service to the local community. Faculty-mentored research programs for undergraduates, as well as many of our academic certificate programs, also emphasize service. And a wide range of cocurricular opportunities -- from DukeEngage to Duke Student government -- involve students with societal issues.
The first academic year is an inward-looking, transitional period, where students are oriented to the values of an academic community -- integrity, freedom of inquiry and expression, respect for individual difference, reliance on reason and evidence, and competition of ideas. Students learn how to be active participants in their community, how to join an intellectual conversation, formulate and support an argument, make claims in public space, and value difference.
The sophomore and junior years are a time for building intellectual, personal, and leadership competencies and a depth of knowledge through majors, interdisciplinary study, and experiential learning (e.g., study abroad, service learning, research, and internships). This is also a time for learning how to link academic inquiry to the social good and to develop the capacities for discernment and commitment.
The senior year refines intellectual and personal skills important for transition to greater autonomy and self-regulation.