The liberal arts education Lyon College offers consists of three parts: the Core curriculum, a major, and elective courses. These three groups of courses, roughly equal in size, complement one another, creating a coherent and individualized liberal education for each Lyon graduate.
The Core curriculum develops the knowledge and abilities essential to a liberal arts education and to advanced studies at the College. In the Core, students also develop the abilities to think critically, to communicate clearly, to understand and use effectively quantitative information. Students also experience breadth of knowledge as they study many of the liberal arts and sciences disciplines available to them as majors.
The major adds depth to the learning students do in the Core as they encounter knowledge, theories, and methodologies of a single discipline, cultivating the ability to solve problems and to arrive at new understanding and insight from a narrowed disciplinary point of view.
Elective courses, whether taken for personal enrichment or to complete a second major, a minor or a concentration, round out students’ education. They offer students the opportunity to pursue special interests, add depth in disciplines other than their majors, and make possible the combination of additional study beyond the Core in liberal arts disciplines for students majoring in a professional discipline and the combination of some study in professional areas for students majoring in a liberal arts discipline.