The NNU Leadership Core | Habits of Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

The Liberal Arts and Human Flourishing  

An education may be put to many valuable purposes. Our courses develop both discipline-specific skills, enabling our graduates to earn livings in fulfilling jobs, and “soft skills,” helping them to be agile in their careers and adept in working well with others, so they can succeed even in adverse conditions. Yet a liberal arts education intends to instill not only skills, but also a love for knowledge and values that are sufficient as ends, not merely as means to ends. Taken this way, our Leadership Core Curriculum, rooted in the liberal arts tradition, can help students escape instrumental thinking about their time at NNU. Instead of continually asking, “What can I do with this?” NNU students can approach their education with the liberating question, “How will this shape me as a person?”   

A “Christian” Liberal Arts Education?  

The liberal arts lend themselves well to a Christian way of thinking about the world and our place in it because they engage with all domains of life, and God makes claims on all domains of life— “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Submitting all of our abilities to God and cultivating them to their utmost potential let us live into Irenaeus’s recognition that “the glory of God is the human being fully alive.” We glorify God by fulfilling the goal of a liberal arts education, which is to become fully human. The pursuit of Christian habits developed through the liberal arts is a worthy goal for any Christian undergraduate, and is rightly at the heart both of NNU’s mission and of the Leadership Core Curriculum. 

Institutional Student Learning Outcomes

Compassion 
Students will exhibit habits of asking questions, listening attentively, faithfully articulating the diverse views of others, and demonstrating care for others.   

Courage  
Students will engage complex issues, confront personal fears, and advocate for ethical principles in challenging situations.  

Curiosity  
Students will appreciate the diversity of the created order and the complexity of human experience with thoughtful questions, open-mindedness, and earnest academic inquiry.  

Honesty  
Students will demonstrate integrity in the pursuit of knowledge, personal conduct, and the formation of a coherent worldview grounded in truth-seeking.  

Humility  
Students will develop self-reflection, a teachable disposition, and an ability to admit mistakes.   

Perseverance 
Students will persist through educational setbacks and show resilience in overcoming obstacles.  

Wisdom  
Students will evaluate information from diverse sources, synthesize multiple perspectives, and make well-reasoned decisions that consider ethical implications and long-term consequences.

NNU eCampus: Leadership Core  

The general education requirements for the accelerated bachelor’s degree are comprised of 32 credits, eight classes (four credits each), which are aligned with the institutional general education outcomes of compassion, courage, curiosity, honesty, humility, perseverance, and wisdom. The outcomes encompass the habits of heart, soul, strength, and mind which are focused on helping students encounter the liberal arts from a Christian perspective. With the perspective of the adult learner in mind, the general education requirements were developed as two leadership certificates in which the courses interweave liberal arts content with leadership and professional principles. The theology student learning outcomes will be embedded within adult focused coursework. Each course seeks to integrate relevant application and content which is meaningful for the professional adult student.  

Leadership Core 1 Courses

Leadership Core 2 Courses