Integrated Core Launches with Energy at the Center

This fall, Caltech introduced its pilot Integrated Core curriculum, a new approach to the first-year experience designed by faculty members collaborating across all five divisions. The program emerged from two years of faculty discussions convened by the Provost and Vice Provost for Education, focused on how to improve retention of foundational material and rekindle the sense of excitement students bring to campus.

Rather than teaching physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and math in isolation, Integrated Core organizes these disciplines around a unifying theme: namely, energy. The fall term uses space travel as a vehicle to connect mechanics, fuel chemistry, planetary science, and even the search for life. Winter shifts to cellular bioenergetics, and spring to carbon capture and climate. Along the way, labs, cross-disciplinary lectures, and multi-day field trips—visiting wind farms, geothermal plants, and Mono Lake—bring the material to life.

The program is resource-intensive, with ten faculty teaching just twenty students, and is not intended to replace the standard Core. Instead, faculty hope lessons from the experiment will eventually inform Core teaching more broadly. “We’re not trying to break something that already works,” says Prof. Asimow, who lends the program a G.P.S. perspective. “But to see whether an alternative model can help students hold onto their enthusiasm and carry it forward.”

At the time of writing, Integrated Core is entering its second week of instruction. The curriculum is still in its early stages, but student response so far indicates the program is already making a positive impact.