A new IU Indianapolis course helps students engage with big ideas

Faith Evans signed up for a new class at IU Indianapolis called Cornerstone, which explores big ideas through literature. The class, which started with Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man", encourages students to think critically about life's big questions, regardless of their major. This new approach to teaching liberal arts is particularly important for IU Indianapolis, as the state passed a law requiring public colleges to review and cut or alter academic majors that didn't have enough graduates.

The Cornerstone program allows professors to share their expertise in a new and exciting way, helping students become better citizens and employees. The books and stories selected for the course are chosen to parallel current issues, with local connections such as Purdue's papers being housed in a museum on campus. The program aims to teach students to reckon with complexity, as the world today is anything but simple.