The Four Pillars
The foundation of the Miami Plan.
The Miami Plan
Our core curriculum is designed to provide transferable skills rooted in The Four Pillars of the Miami Plan. These Four Pillars are an embodiment of our university mission and values, informing our instruction and guiding us in all we do. Anchored by The Four Pillars, each of the unique courses in the Miami Plan core curriculum are designed to broaden perspectives, build global literacy, and provide students with the willpower and expertise required for success in today’s world.
Learning that's Global, Innovative, and Impactful
Miami University was founded in 1809 on the belief that a liberal education provides the best possible experience for life in a changing world. “Liberal,” from the Latin liberalis, means “free” - the kind of education that free and democratic citizens should attain. Miami’s emphasis on global and innovative liberal education continues and is now referred to as the Miami Plan. The Miami Plan enhances specialized studies in any major or professional field and provides contexts for exploring social, academic, and professional choices. It empowers students to creatively transform the future with the tools to question assumptions, design solutions, exchange views with others, and become better global citizens.
The Perspectives Areas
Broadens your intellectual toolkit.
Signature Inquiry Options
Cutting-edge courses that embody the best of Miami’s teacher-scholar approach.
Knowledge in Action
Engage and create meaningful culminating experiences that prepare you for the future.
The Four Pillars
Every Miami Plan class you take develops crucial transferable skills in Miami’s “Four Pillars” that embody the values and mission of Miami’s approach to liberal education.
Civic-Mindedness and Social Engagement
Understand and articulate how your research and studies relate to the greater social good; you will understand your education not simply as preparation for a better job but for global civic engagement and service to others.
Collaboration and Innovation
Gain experience in collaborative and innovative research, effective teamwork, adaptability, creativity, entrepreneurship, leadership, and technological literacy.
Communication and Expression
Realize your capacity to communicate research and ideas — and, as applicable, to persuade — with sophistication, force, and clarity, orally, in writing, and through other audio/visual/semiotic means.
Critical and Integrative Thinking
Systematically research and explore complex claims, objects, texts, and problems through the development of questions and hypotheses, collection and analysis of evidence, the formation of sound conclusions or judgments, and a habit of self-scrutiny and revision.
Perspectives Areas
These courses will broaden your intellectual skills by equipping you to examine issues from the perspectives of different academic disciplines and interdisciplinary departments.
Formal Reasoning and Communication
Execute problem solving, pattern finding, formal reasoning, communication, and advanced writing. (9 credits)
Science and Society
Explore the complex connections of our physical, cultural, and biological environments and the multifaceted nature of human behavior and societies. (12+ credits)
Arts and Humanities
Critically engage history, cultures, creative works, languages, and the arts that embody the diversity of human experience. (6 credits)
Global Citizenship
Foster ethical citizenship and an awareness of globalization and the contexts in which diverse identities and social roles are created by focusing on a deeper understanding of ourselves in a multilingual and multicultural world. (12 credits)
Signature Inquiries
Signature Inquiries guide your Perspectives Area course selections with classes that showcase cutting-edge pedagogy and topics. Work alongside classmates and faculty from different academic disciplines and departments to find solutions that address the same urgent needs in today's complex and increasingly interconnected world.
Investigate how resources—whether natural, scientific, technological, ecological, creative, educational, artistic, historic, or sociocultural—have been and can be sustained, engineered, and deployed to meet the needs of current and future generations.
Consider questions of cultural and linguistic diversity, equity and social justice broadly conceived, and the ways in which dynamics of ecology, power and conflict shape societies across time.
Investigate all the ways in which information, data, and technology impact societies and cultures and influence our understanding of “truth” and reality, in a world that grows increasingly interconnected and fractured at the same time.
Explore how people construct narratives or imagine possibilities, experiences, and worlds (internal or external), as ways to make meaning and identity, gain new perspectives, or devise solutions to problems.
Study the ways in which health — more than merely the absence of disease — reflects the biological, environmental, individual, social, political-economic, or cultural processes that yield and impact our physical, mental, or social well-being.
Knowledge in Action
Look to the farther horizons of your future in the world by participating in experiential learning and, as part of the culmination of your Miami education, your Senior Capstone. These experiences place a special emphasis on applying the knowledge and skills you’ve gained to settings beyond the classroom.
Experiential Learning
Experiential learning takes a variety of forms, from internships to civic engagement, with the key elements of understanding and employing new ideas and new knowledge from direct experience in a real world or an “out of the traditional classroom” context.
Miami Senior Capstone
In your final year of study, you will join a workshop, research seminar, individual or group project, or creative work in a studio, laboratory, or field study to combine your Miami Plan learning with the specialized knowledge of your major.
Contact Us
Office of Liberal Education
315 A, B Laws Hall
Oxford, OH 45056
