2009-2010 Bulletin – PDF - SEAS Bulletin - Columbia University

4
A FORWARD-LOOKING
TRADITION
But, for all its change, there is still a continuous
educational thread that remains
the same. The Fu Foundation School
of Engineering and Applied Science still
remains an institution of manageable
size within a great university. Committed
to the educational philosophy that a
broad, rigorous exposure to the liberal
arts provides the surest chart with which
an engineer can navigate the future, all
undergraduates must complete a modified
but equally rigorous version of
Columbia College’s celebrated Core
Curriculum. It is these selected courses
in contemporary civilization in the West
and other global cultures that best prepare
a student for advanced course
work; a wide range of eventual professions;
and a continuing, life-long pursuit
of knowledge, understanding, and social
perspective. It is also these Core courses
that most closely tie today’s student
to the alumni of centuries past. Through
a shared exposure to the nontechnical
arts, all Columbia engineering students—past,
present, and future—gain
the humanistic tools needed to build
lives not solely as technical innovators,
but as social and political ones as well.
SEAS 2009–2010