The Blount Liberal Arts Minor
The Blount curriculum is comprised of a total of eight courses (20 hours: 6 three-hour seminars and 2 one-hour convocation lectures) over the course of the student’s time at the university.
- First Year: 2 Foundations Seminars (6 hours) + 2 Convocations (2 hours) = 4 credit hours per semester
- Sophomore/Junior: 3 Elective Seminars over the two years (9 hours)
- Senior: 1 Worldviews Capstone Seminar (3 hours)
The First Year
Students entering the program live in Blount Hall, our living-learning community. The Foundations courses are held in classrooms on the first floor of the dorm (no more “my dorm is all the way across campus” excuses). BUI 101 and BUI 102 are seminar classes in which students discuss, challenge, and question the reading material in class sizes of fewer than 15.
While the Blount first-year cohort’s curriculum changes every year, below is a list of the more consistent readings.
- Plato’s Republic and The Apology
- St. Augustine’s Confessions
- DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk
- Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
- Darwin’s “On the Tendency of Species”
- Anzaldúa’s Borderlands
- E.O. Wilson’s “The Serpent”
In BUI 100, the entire first-year cohort gathers to engage with speakers who have come to speak specifically to Blount scholars. These speakers range from Galapagos researchers to descendants of Winton Blount.
Can these Blount classes count for something more than just the minor?
Say no more. BUI 101 and 102 also satisfy 6 hours of foundation credit for the Honors College. In addition, BUI 101 satisfies 3 hours of the University common core requirement in humanities (HU), and BUI 102 satisfies 3 hours of the University common core requirement in social and behavioral sciences (SB). Not to mention the benefits of learning the invaluable reading, writing, and discussion skills for which Blount students are renowned.
Sophomore and Junior Years
Over the course of their sophomore and junior years, students take three BUI 301 seminars (3 credit hours each for a total of 9 credit hours). Students may take the seminars during any semester in those two years and may take more than one per semester. You even have the opportunity to fulfill your Blount requirements while studying abroad! BUI 301 seminars are capped at 12 students and are held either in Oliver-Barnard Hall or Tuomey Hall.
Are the upper-level courses just reading old, dead philosophers?
Who told you that’s all we do? We in Blount try to take a holistic approach to our courses. Want to study Cuba during the Cold War from a former CIA agent? Want to study how architecture affects your day to day life? Want to deconstruct how television has a psychological grip on culture? We’ve got it in spades. Don’t take it from me, check out our courses page.
Senior Year
During senior year, the students take BUI 401 (3 hours) during either the fall or spring semester. The BUI 401 seminars are capped at 12 students and are held either in Oliver-Barnard Hall or Tuomey Hall. The course is a culmination of your years with Blount and your senior course ends with a “Worldviews Project” where you and your fellow students each create something to represent your “worldview”.
What does that mean? it is up to you. Is your worldview a diamond laced necklace to represent your family’s immigration to the US and subsequent growth of a small business family jewelry store? Is it a memoir detailing your experience of being raised in Mississippi your whole life and the subsequent impact that a small-town experience had on your growth into a blossoming teacher? Is it a metallurgical creation of a gigantic magnet heart emblazoned with different symbols to represent the fusion of the liberals arts and your heavy STEM background? We each have a unique worldview and Blount intends to help you explore it. To find out the creativity that we are talking about how about you check out our application?