IDS helps us make connections and see the big picture that tends to get lost when we focus exclusively on a single area. IDS offers us the tools to examine issues from different perspectives. IDS encourages dialogue and respect for diversity. IDS shows us that complex questions and important issues can't be addressed with simple answers. IDS is preparation for life.

In their 1984 Conference on Critical Thinking and Higher Order Reasoning, scholars from private schools such as Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Notre Dame called for the integration of student thinking rather than its continued fragmentation. At that time, USAO was already in its second decade of doing precisely that--for graduates of ordinary public high schools. When in the Cheney Report (1989) the U.S. Department of Education called on colleges to require an interdisciplinary core curriculum, USAO had been doing so for over twenty years. And when a number of schools, responding to that document, met at the University of North Texas in Denton in the spring of 1990 to form the American Association for the Advancement of the Core Curriculum (AAACC), it was to the USAO representative that participants turned for advice on how to develop and institute such a program.

The USAO required core program spans a student’s entire college career. A freshman seminar introduces participants to the art of wondering, collaborative learning, and college in general. In the Individual in Contemporary Society, future USAO graduates  have a chance to explore the ways people live in different parts of the world and share their insights with the class as a whole. In other core courses the tools of logic, mathematics, language, and computing are emphasized. Next, students go on to the physical and biological sciences, economic and political systems, various forms of creativity, and, during the junior and senior years, some 5000 years of global scientific, religious, philosophical, literary, and artistic ideas. Finally, they complete the circle with a senior level seminar to integrate general education with their major field or some passionate personal interest. All along they are expected to read, think, explore, discuss, and write. Most of the ideas based courses are taught by at least two faculty members from different disciplines to demonstrate the importance of illuminating issues from a variety of perspectives. While our core program had its beginnings over three decades ago, it has not remained static. It is under continuous revision, and courses are changed, deleted, and added to meet current demands and conditions.

At USAO, the education which has traditionally been reserved for the privileged is available to students who cannot afford the more expensive private liberal arts colleges or do not fit the profile of the "traditional" student such schools recruit. At USAO we are offering empowering education to people who might otherwise be shut out of the system. Democracy in education does not mean reducing all students to the lowest common denominator. It means raising even the least advantaged to the highest level of possibility. This is the purpose of a liberal arts education.

If the United States were a totalitarian nation, a population trained for critical thinking and problem solving, for making connections and exercising rational judgments would not be necessary, might even be considered a liability. But in a country where citizens vote, making choices which affect not only their own lives and futures but those of the entire world, these are precisely the skills which the populace needs most: it is easy enough to know one's rights; it requires education to understand the responsibilities entailed by those rights. This is why we can say: IDS is preparation for life.