Institution Core Curriculum

The Core Curriculum serves two essential purposes as the institution strives to achieve its goals.  First, courses offered within the Core provide an intellectual foundation for the focused and detailed academic work that students are expected to perform in their majors.  Second, courses offered within the Core provide a wide exposure to ideas, perspectives, issues, and knowledge that lie beyond the narrow parameters of any individual major.  This broad intellectual experience enables students to gain perspective on the complexity, the diversity, and the beauty of the world we all inhabit.  Taken together, the UAB Core Curriculum enables its graduates to become productive, flexible, and discerning citizens of an increasingly interdependent world. 

The University of Alabama at Birmingham, like all of the public four-year institutions in the state, accepts applicants who have: (1) attained credit from community colleges or other four-year institutions; and (2) those that have attained an Associate of Arts degree from a state community college.  Established in 1994 by the Alabama State Legislature, the Alabama Articulation and General Studies Committee (AGSC) was charged to develop a statewide freshman and sophomore level general studies curriculum to be taken at all public colleges and universities, and to develop and adopt a statewide articulation agreement for the freshman and sophomore years for the transfer of credit among all public institutions of higher education in Alabama.  The Articulation and General Studies Agreement insures that transfer students have met the general education requirements consistent with those for students who begin the University of Alabama at Birmingham as freshmen.  The Core Curriculum represents a strong arts and sciences foundation that prepares students for discipline-based majors and for professional programs such as those in the professional education unit.