Endowed by Winton and Carolyn Blount and assisted by many other donors, the Blount Scholars Program is a selective, four-year, living and learning community featuring small, seminar-style classes, intensive interaction with faculty, and an integrated, interdisciplinary curriculum leading to a minor. Overall program enrollment is approximately 350 students. Blount is open to all incoming first-year students regardless of academic interests or major. In its courses and social activities, the program emphasizes the connectedness of knowledge and the importance of faculty-student learning partnerships.
Courses
Experiences to extend and complement the Blount Scholars Program foundation courses. May be repeated once for credit.
This course uses a survey of influential texts in philosophy, science, religion, political theory, and literature produced in the West over three millennia to provide students with an introductory practicum in the interpretation of texts, critical thinking, and integration of knowledge. Within this framework, students will explore the questions: What is truth? What are the various methods we use to determine truth? What does it mean to be human? What makes a person who they are? How can we create a society that works for all people? The goal of the course is to gain a fundamental knowledge of important ideas, values, and systems in place in the Western world and learn how to analyze them.