Designing an Exploration

Information for Faculty Interested in Designing an Exploration:

Explorations are designed and approved by a department or through a collaboration of multiple departments. As long as minimum requirements of an Exploration are met, no further approval is necessary. Explorations can:

• cover all courses within a discipline (e.g., Religion),
• be limited to a subset of courses within a discipline (e.g., History of Western Philosophy), or
• focus on a theme with course choices from multiple disciplines (e.g., Modern Intellectual Thought).*

*The last option represents an important way we can help students find electives on topics that are of interest to them but are offered by programs other than their major.

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The minimum requirements are:

• Units:  Each exploration will require at least 3 units.
• Overlap rule:  At least 2 units must be outside of the INQ/HNRS curriculum and a student’s major, minor, or concentration.

Additional requirements at the discretion of department(s): 

• greater number of units,
• minimum GPA.

Courses allowed for an Exploration should be offered frequently enough that a student can complete requirements without tutorials or independent studies.

Questions? Talk to your department chair or to Jennifer Berenson, Explorations Coordinator.