Starting in Fall 2025, UNC Asheville’s Core Curriculum does not include any required courses from the Humanities Program for the first time in over six decades. As the two most recent directors of this program, we wanted to bear witness to the Program that until now served as the heart of UNCA’s Core Curriculum.

In 1963 the faculty at Asheville-Biltmore College (as UNCA was known at the time) reviewed its general education program and proposed the earliest version of the Humanities Program. In recommending the six four-hour courses, the faculty committee stressed the need “to make a break with some of the traditional methods that had divided the humanities into more specific academic disciplines.” This focus on a collaborative approach to interdisciplinary education has been the hallmark

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