New Curriculum Beginning Fall 2025

Students entering Duke in Fall 2025 will follow a new curriculum, adopted in April 2024.

“Today’s undergraduates live in a very different world than the students of the early 2000s,” said Gary G. Bennett, dean of Trinity College. “Amid global insecurities, climate change, increased polarization and technological advances that were barely imaginable 25 years ago, a world-class liberal arts education is more valuable than ever. But how we deliver on that promise should evolve over time.”

The information below applies to students entering in Fall 2025. If you are an undergraduate student who entered prior to Fall 2025, you can find more information about your curriculum here.

Shared Values for a Liberal Arts Curriculum

The Arts & Sciences curriculum defines the set of academic experiences that will be shared by its students. It should ensure that all students receive the core elements of a Duke liberal arts education, regardless of their background, academic path, or co-curricular activities. These elements include engagement with different disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, active interaction with peers and faculty, and sustained study in at least one discipline.

Values for the Duke Student Experience

Connections

The curriculum supports our students as they build connections within Duke. Building connections – with other students, with faculty, and across ways of thinking and experiences – provides a firm foundation for our students’ pathways through Duke.

Curiosity

The curriculum encourages curiosity. Students develop a mindset that promotes openness to novel ideas, that values understanding even in the absence of instrumental outcomes, and that supports continued learning throughout the lifetime.

Humility

The curriculum encourages epistemic humility. Students recognize the limitations of their own knowledge, while also developing the skills necessary for engaging with others’ viewpoints in a constructive, respectful manner.

“Trinity College of Arts & Sciences is committed to providing an educational experience that supports each student’s intellectual and personal growth. With the adoption of this new curriculum, tomorrow’s undergraduates will continue to experience the world-class liberal arts education Trinity is known for as Duke University moves into its second century."
- Deborah Reisinger, Dean of Undergraduate Education for Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

See full-sized graphic of the new curriculum.

Features of the New Curriculum

First-Year Experience

Trinity students must complete a first-year experience that includes a set of three interconnected courses that explore a topic from multiple perspectives.

This can be satisfied by enrolling in the FOCUS program or participating in a Constellation. Constellations include:

One first-year writing course, which might be assigned for either the fall or spring semester.
Two other related courses. One of these must be taken in the fall semester and the other in the spring semester, and at least one must involve small-group learning

Liberal Arts

Trinity students must complete two courses in each of six categories:

CE: Creating & Engaging with Art
HI: Humanistic Inquiry
IJ: Interpreting Institutions, Justice & Power
NW: Investigating the Natural World
QC: Quantitative & Computational Reasoning
SB: Social & Behavioral Analysis

Languages + Writing

Trinity students must complete three writing courses, including first-year writing and at least one course after their first year.

Trinity students must complete three courses in a single language sequence, two courses at the 300-level or higher, or one course at the 300-level or higher and two courses in another sequence.

Century Courses

Century Courses can be described as the course our faculty would most want a student to take if they could only take one course in a particular subject in their life. These classes will be offered without prerequisites to encourage exploration of disciplines outside of a student’s previous academic experiences.

Each major may offer one Century Course each semester.