This site will provide you with information about the Curriculum for Liberal Education (CLE), a vital component of undergraduate education at Virginia Tech, and required for every undergraduate student.
The CLE comprises 25 - 30% of an undergraduate's credits toward graduation, and offers over 500 courses in more than 60 departments, across 7 required CLE Areas of Study. Designed to empower students with a broad base of knowledge and transferable skills through exposure to multiple disciplines and ways of knowing, the CLE seeks to create the conditions for growing creative and intellectual engagement; civic, personal, and social responsibility; and lifelong learning.
The CLE is designed to foster and develop:
- intellectual curiosity and critical thinking
- the capacity for collaboration and creative problem solving
- the ability to synthesize and transfer knowledge
- intercultural knowledge and understanding
- strong analytic, communication, quantitative, and information literacy skills
- ethical reasoning and action
Curriculum Course Proposal
Faculty wishing to propose the inclusion of a course in the Curriculum for Liberal Education should review the following proposal guidelines.
- Download here (PDF)
"Knowledge is power. Rather, knowledge is happiness. To have knowledge, deep broad knowledge, is to know truth from false and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked men's progress, is to feel the heartthrob of humanity through the centuries."
- Helen Keller
Earth Sustainability Course Series
Explore the ES Course Series for an innovative option in completing your CLE.
Living In the KnowlEdge Society (LIKES) Course Series
LIKES courses integrate computing concepts into the activities of diverse disciplines.