Curriculum

1. Mission

The Asian University for Women prepares women of high ability and potential to meet society’s challenges and effect positive change through an innovative, rigorous curriculum rooted in the liberal arts and sciences, and develops thoughtful, ethical leaders.

2. Needs of our students

Our students will graduate from AUW and start to work or continue to graduate school.  When they graduate from AUW they need:

• Depth of knowledge of one field of study
• Breadth of knowledge across disciplines
• Professional skills
• Leadership skills
• Be empowered to make a difference
• Teamwork and effective communication skills

3. Educational strategies

An evidence-based curriculum draws on research in student-learning behavior, cognitive psychology, and brain development to inform curriculum design and educational strategies that most effectively facilitate student-learning. 

The pedagogic reasoning is that people learn by doing.  Students arrive at university with diverse backgrounds and experiences.  Authentic activities (such as service learning and problem-solving real issues) facilitate mapping new knowledge to these diverse backgrounds and experiences.  Creating an authentic context throughout the curriculum builds the cognitive framework to understand the core knowledge more deeply.

Critically evaluating – Communicating – Innovating solutions to real world problems is what change agents do!  It provides the framework for teaching skills; it subtly allows deeper learning of the core knowledge; and it attracts, excites and retains students.

4.  The AUW Curriculum 

To achieve these goals, the BA curriculum consists of a four-year, 32-course undergraduate program and the combined BA/MA curriculum is a five-year, 40 unit program .  Courses are designated as either Core or Disciplinary.  The curriculum reflects evidence-based design for effective student (female-friendly) learning, and cognitive developmental sequencing of content and skill acquisition.  It accounts for students’ diverse (cultural, educational, language, class) backgrounds, student workload, faculty workload, and tracking toward specialization.  It maximizes faculty diversity and impact while maintaining a small student-faculty ration.

Core Courses

All AUW students will complete the core curriculum.  The philosophy of the core sequence of courses is that AUW students should be broadly educated, as well as trained in a particular academic specialty.  Similar to Harvard’s core course philosophy, AUW strives to introduce students to the different disciplinary knowledge: kinds of knowledge, forms of inquiry, analysis tools and application, and values.

In the first year sequence, AUW students will take a total of 8 courses comprising two each from the Humanities, Social Sciences, Sciences and Quantitative Reasoning Laboratory. They will learn the types of knowledge, thinking processes, and tools of the major disciplines by examining issues from the Humanities’ vantage of human perspective and identity; the Social Sciences’ approach to human societies and behavior; and the Sciences’ use of physical evidence to investigate natural phenomena.

In the second year, students will take two Women Shaping Society (WSS) courses, to engage AUW students in the major issues of gender in the Asian region, and gain experience with the critical insight tools needed by future Asian women leaders including issues of justice, responsibility, and decision-making. In addition, students will take two core Media Laboratories, which will provide the skills and mentoring to facilitate communication-based projects (oral, written, blog, web, portfolio, film) related to Women Shaping Society and other courses.

In the third year, students will take two Interdisciplinary Seminars, which will provide experience with multi-faceted analysis of complex cross-disciplinary issues.

The academic leadership is looking into a possible fourth year of undergraduate studies, where students will take two semesters of Innovation-Lab in sequence.  Modified and adapted from MIT’s D-Lab, this 2-course sequence is the capstone experience for AUW students that demonstrates mastery of the curriculum goals.  Students will work in teams to develop, design, and implement a project that addresses a community issue.  This builds critical thinking, leadership, ethical reasoning, and collaborative skills as well as draws on knowledge from across the disciplines to find solutions or action for complex problems.

Disciplinary Courses for Majors

Starting in Year 2, disciplinary courses for the majors will be offered in:

• Literature and Women’s Studies
• Politics, Philosophy and Economics
• Biological Sciences
• Information and Communication Technology

bridges to employment

The AUW curriculum provides key ‘soft skills’ vital to the global job market: communication, problem-solving, collaborative work, integrative thinking, quantitative skills, ethical decision-making.  AUW’s 3rd year Project and 4th year I-Lab are models of authentic experiential learning.  Students gain experience in leadership, integrative thinking, collaborative work, problem-solving, ethical decision-making, character development, and communication while providing the community with solutions and action.  Students become part of a valuable network of institutions working on community problems, by virtue of the integrative AUW-Community (business, NGO, government) collaboration on issues required for these projects.

Summer internships in the community and the region will build on the skills gained at AUW, providing opportunities for student employment, and enhancing AUW’s reputation for excellence in education. 

 

Table 1: Typical 4-Year BA Program

Year	Semester 1	Semester 2	Summer
1	Humanities 1	Humanities 2	Statistical Lab
	Social Science 1	Social Science 2	Electives*
	Science 1	Science 2
	Quantitative Reasoning 1	Quantitative Reasoning 2
2	Women SS 1	Women SS 2	Internship
	Media Lab 1	Media Lab 2	Electives*
	Disciplinary Conc.1	Disciplinary Conc.2
	Disciplinary Conc.3	Disciplinary Conc.4
3	Project 1	Project 2	Internship
	Disciplinary Conc.5	Disciplinary Conc.6	Electives*
	Disciplinary Conc.7	Disciplinary Conc.8
	Interdisciplinary Seminar 1	Interdisciplinary Seminar 2
4	Disciplinary Conc.9	Disciplinary Conc.10	GRADUATION BA
	Disciplinary Conc.11	Disciplinary Conc.12
	I-Lab 1	I-Lab 2
	Media Seminar 1	Media Seminar 2
	Electives*	via Study Abroad
		Business Ethics
		Independent Research

          *All courses in italics involve choices by students

Table 2: Typical 5-Year Combined BA/MA program

Year	Semester 1	Semester 2	Summer
1	Humanities 1	Humanities 2	Statistical Lab
	Social Science 1	Social Science 2	Electives*
	Science 1	Science 2
	Quantitative Reasoning 1	Quantitative Reasoning 2
2	Women SS 1	Women SS 2	Internship
	Media Lab 1	Media Lab 2	Electives*
	Disciplinary Conc.1	Disciplinary Conc.2
	Disciplinary Conc.3	Disciplinary Conc.4
3	Project 1	Project 2	Internship
	Disciplinary Conc.5	Disciplinary Conc.6	Electives*
	Disciplinary Conc.7	Disciplinary Conc.8
	Interdisciplinary Seminar 1	Interdisciplinary Seminar 2
4	Grad Course 1	Grad Course 2	Graduate Project
	Grad Course 3	Grad Course 4	Electives*
	I-Lab 1	I-Lab 2
	Media Seminar 1	Media Seminar 2
5	Graduate Course 5	Graduate Course 6	GRADUATION BA/MA
	Graduate Course 7	Graduate Course 8
	Graduate Project	Graduate Project
	Graduate Project	Graduate Project
	Electives*	via Study Abroad
		Business Ethics
		Independent Research

          

          *All courses in italics involve choices by students