Core courses

At present, this program consists of nine interdisciplinary courses, five mandatory and four optional. The goals of this program include:

• Enhancing the intellectual and spiritual progress of students
• Preparing students for serving all humanity while pursuing their academic and professional goals
• Engaging students in the betterment of the country and advancement of the world civilization
• Exploring the relationship between science and religion
• Broadening the dimensions of students' formal education
• Providing perspective and context for living in an interconnected world in the 21st century

This critical age of accelerating global interdependence requires a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of the generation, application, and dissemination of knowledge, and their role in advancing a prosperous civilization. BIHE’s Core Curriculum, while acknowledging the independence of various disciplines, attempts to recognize the need for a dialogue between the sciences and the humanities. We believe that all students need such a common understanding to enable them to explore the integration of various branches of knowledge and be engaged in discourse on the relationships between scientific progress, technological innovation, and ethical values. Furthermore, evidence-based practices have clearly demonstrated that adding core curricula to specialized studies enhances students’ resourcefulness and versatility.

The modern curriculum is suffering from over-specialization and too much emphasis on material tools and techniques of civilization. The Core Curriculum is potentially capable of opening a new vista in the horizon of higher education, transcending the piecemeal and mechanical function of education into a holistic understanding of the multiplicity of human experience throughout history. It can also provide students with diverse manifestations of humanity’s spiritual, moral, and social transformation over time.

Students are encouraged to explore how scientific facts fit into a larger and broader scheme of values. Some of the questions they consider in their studies are: How are students a part of the human journey of the past and the future? How can we walk in the footsteps of the great minds and spiritual giants of human civilization? How have different cultures, religions, and nations contributed to the emergence of a global society? What human characteristics have led to the rise and fall of civilizations? What mistakes and erroneous assumptions are a constant theme throughout our collective past, and how can we avoid making them ourselves in this age? What is the nature of science and scientific inquiry? How can our valuable advancements in science, technology, and economic progress over the past few centuries contribute to a more just, peaceful, and prosperous civilization? How can the ideals of unity, peace, and justice inform and shape the future of our global society?

These questions are explored from an interdisciplinary perspective so that students can examine how different branches of knowledge, fields of human experience, and cultural patterns of thought have contributed to an ever-advancing global civilization through the dynamic impulse of human evolution and social progress. Towards this vision, core curriculum courses attempt to synthesize knowledge from different specialized fields, explore science's capacity to support and magnify human capabilities, and to encourage discourse analysis on ethical implications of scientific experiments.

Based on the set curricular goals and principles, BIHE students have to study 21 credit-units (seven courses) of Core Curriculum from a collection of nine courses listed below (five mandatory courses and four optional courses). The core courses conform to the following specifications:

• reflect unity of knowledge
• based on cooperative, autonomous learning
• encourage critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ethics of caring
• explore relationships between the sciences and humanities
• promote service projects
• foster a sense of creativity, initiative, and innovation
• designed according to reasoning modalities in interdisciplinary studies