University college freiburg: Toward a new unity of research and teaching in academia

Abstract

This contribution introduces University College Freiburg (UCF) and its English-taught Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) program. In the first part, the chapter relates the Freiburg LAS endeavor to the traditional continental European understanding of the unity of research and teaching. It then proposes five fundamental perspectives that the authors believe are particularly relevant for an emerging European model of liberal education: student autonomy and independence; an interdisciplinary and epistemological outlook; an early research orientation; the curricular integration of skills training; and an internationally oriented, multilingual mission within a larger university. In the second part, the LAS curriculum is introduced and situated in the context of UCF, a platform institution for interdisciplinary teaching at the University of Freiburg.