Cornerstone Course Requirements

All new students participate in First-Year Seminars at Stonehill. These courses provide opportunities for students to explore engaging topics or questions in a small-class format emphasizing writing, discussion, critical thinking, and academic inquiry. Because effective writing is integral to critical thinking, the seminars all emphasize frequent writing, close examination of texts, rigorous analysis and reasoning, and information fluency. Courses that meet these requirements are indicated in the Course Catalog portion of this guide. All of these courses develop students’ critical thinking skills and sharpen their ability to read and write critically, to formulate compelling questions suitable for intellectual inquiry, and to distinguish between critical argumentation, statements of opinion, and summary. Seminars in Philosophy and Religious Studies are taken in the first year; History and Literature Seminars may be taken in the first or second year. All First-Year Cornerstone Seminars have no prerequisites and are open to all first-year students on a space-available basis, regardless of major.

Students are required to complete an appropriate yearlong sequence (two semesters of the same language) of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Latin, or Spanish, experiencing the diversity of human culture. Language study at Stonehill incorporates five essential dimensions: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities.   

The main goal of Moral Inquiry courses is to provide students with the ability to understand the varying or conflicting solutions that, in a global world, have been proposed to fundamental moral and ethical questions. In order to explore such questions students are introduced to different philosophical, political, or religious beliefs, or to various cultural traditions and practices. This equips students to assess for themselves claims about moral and ethical issues. 

Courses that fulfill the Catholic Intellectual Traditions (CIT) requirement explore, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, enduring questions, both theological and philosophical, that emerged from and shaped Catholicism, from ancient times to the present. Some examples are: What is the meaning of human nature? What is the best human life to live? What is the nature of the universe?  CIT courses invite students to address these questions so that each student will have sustained, critical engagement with Catholic thought and practice. In some cases, one course will fulfill both the Moral Inquiry requirement and the CIT requirement. 

Another feature of the third year at Stonehill is the Writing-in-the-Disciplines (WID) requirement. WID courses build on students’ experiences in the Cornerstone Seminars and introduce students to the stylistic and scholarly conventions of writing in particular disciplines and fields. Students fulfill this requirement through advanced writing-intensive courses offered within their major. 

Social Scientific Inquiry courses help students to develop theoretical and evidence-based thought and to apply social scientific theories, concepts, research findings and methods to identify and comprehend broad societal trends and important events. 

The primary goal of the Natural Scientific Inquiry courses is to equip students with some basic tools to address issues involving science so that they can make informed decisions about the impact of science and regulatory policies on their lives and eventually become more active and engaged citizens. 

In the 21st century, our exposure to numerical and quantitative data has made Statistical Reasoning an essential intellectual and practical skill set, including critical thinking, information literacy, and problem solving. The study of Statistical Reasoning helps students to develop and apply the requisite skills and tools to determine whether the results of empirical studies are meaningful enough to encourage change in one’s behaviors, attitudes, and/or beliefs.