Students take an expository writing course that is linked to one of 27 general education lecture courses. The writing course develops thinking and writing skills in the disciplinary content. The writing and the lecture courses carry an equal number of credits. Students get 5 quarter hours for each course in this program. Instructors work together to generate ideas for the writing assignments based on questions that arise during the content course.
Faculty teach the clustered courses as discrete courses.
Students receive credit for each course individually, but the clustered courses are a substantial portion of their course load or the entire load. Faculty planning varies from just coordinating their syllabi to designing ways to address common themes and issues together. The Social Science Cluster is built around the theme of work and the Humanities Cluster explores the theme of freedom. The courses are scheduled back to back and students attend classes as a group. The faculty team does collaborative planning to ensure that connections are built around the themes.