Journeys Magazine Fall 2025 | Mercy Core Curriculum: Shaping Bold, Compassionate Leaders
The following story was featured in the fall 2025 edition of College of Saint Mary's Journeys alumni magazine.
The new Mercy Core Curriculum is more than an academic requirement, it’s a call for students to lead with courage, think with purpose and act for justice.
The new curriculum, which was launched in fall 2025, was created after a committee of faculty compiled student learning outcomes during the 2023-2024 academic year.
“As we honor our relationship with the Sisters of Mercy and there was an opportunity to think about what that means for our curriculum,” said Kristin Mattson, assistant dean of arts and humanities.
The core curriculum was previously made up of general education course requirements.
“We often think about general education as checking the boxes, but we wanted to be intentional so that students can see that the knowledge and skills they gain in those courses are useful to them in their civic and professional lives,” Mattson said.
Students take 39 credit hours of liberal arts and sciences courses that focus on building strong spiritual and ethical foundations.
The curriculum, which is unique to CSM, includes three Mercy Foundation courses, Leading with Mercy, Theology and the Critical Concerns and Women of Impact.
Students take an additional theology course and choose core competency courses that are tailored to their personal mission and goals.
The core competencies are academic writing and information literacy, creative thinking and expression, critical reading and analysis, global citizenship, human behavior and social systems, quantitative reasoning and scientific thinking.
Read more stories from the fall 2025 edition of Journeys magazine.
