The Kilachand Curriculum
The Kilachand curriculum invites students to formulate and discuss questions of scientific, social, ethical, and aesthetic significance and share their conclusions with a broad audience. Through a combination of seminars, lectures, break-out discussions, and experiential opportunities, students hone their creative and critical thinking skills and apply them to problems of contemporary relevance.
The First Year
The first year introduces students to academic disciplines and interdisciplinary fields and focuses on helping them develop the crucial skills of critical and creative thinking and college-level writing.
First-year seminars engage students in scholarly research and creativity through an intensive look at topics, problems, and questions in various disciplines and interdisciplinary areas.
Students hone their skills with textual analysis, research, composition, and revision through small writing studios and one-on-one tutorials with faculty while participating in cultural events that serve as prompts for papers.
The Second and Third Years
In the second and third years, students explore a variety of research methods and scholarly and practical approaches to fundamental problems facing human society that are best understood in an interdisciplinary context.
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Global Challenges
These team-taught courses invite students to discuss and propose solutions to major global challenges, from climate change to forced displacement to political systems. Opportunities for experiential learning are connected to the curriculum, allowing students to explore the impact of their work outside of the classroom.
Epistemologies and the Process of Inquiry
With a focus on provocative topics such as democratic elections, gun violence, or water politics, these courses explore what constitutes knowledge, evidence, and data in a variety of fields. Working in interdisciplinary teams, students ask crucial questions and imagine the research projects that might answer them.
Keystone Proposal Workshop
Students learn how to design a research and/or creative project and pitch their ideas to their workshop colleagues as they formulate proposals for the Keystone Projects they will complete in their senior year.
The Fourth Year
In the fourth year, Kilachand provides the space and resources for students to engage in their own creative and intellectual pursuits and then share their work with a variety of audiences.
Students follow a number of pathways to complete a year-long Keystone Project in their chosen fields under the mentorship of a project advisor.
In the senior seminars, students and faculty discuss how to live engaged and fulfilling lives within and beyond the university at a transitional moment in students’ personal experiences. The seminars also support students as they complete their Keystone Projects and prepare for the Keystone Symposium.
Kilachand & The BU Hub
Kilachand Honors College is one of three BU Hub Pathways. All Kilachand courses carry BU Hub units and the Kilachand curriculum is designed to provide students with a breadth of units across the Hub areas, allowing Kilachand students to satisfy a majority of the BU Hub through the Kilachand curriculum. Remaining BU Hub requirements will be satisfied from a wide range of available courses within and outside the major or, in some cases, BU Hub co-curricular experiences.