{"id":2763,"date":"2026-04-17T10:33:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/?p=2763"},"modified":"2026-04-17T10:33:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:33:52","slug":"the-core-four-experience-elevating-student-opportunities-on-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/17\/the-core-four-experience-elevating-student-opportunities-on-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Core Four Experience: Elevating Student Opportunities on Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Afternoon sun hits the University of Redlands\u2019 Administration building. This building houses the Presidents\u2019 office, while the Office of the Dean is in Duke Hall right next door. Photo by Kyle Eaton, \u201824<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The University of Redlands has a longstanding tradition of service and opportunity, with many a spotlight on activities like volunteering, studying abroad and conducting research. As of this year, however, there has been a new push by the Dean of the College of Art and Science to make a more united focus towards the many unique aspects of a Redlands educational experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the Core Four?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Core Four is the name of an initiative by the CAS Dean\u2019s office, encompassing four significant opportunities that can be found at Redlands: community service learning (CSL), undergraduate research, career internships and study away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe think these four are transformative, deeply immersive and require interactions with others,\u201d CAS Dean Justin Rose explained. \u201cThe \u2018doing’ part is the students engaging in that, but also it’s on us to remove barriers and let people know about resources that exist in those opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Core Four was created after the Dean\u2019s Office looked into patterns in Redlands alumni responses about what experiences had the greatest impacts in their working lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incorporating the Core Four into the student experience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Community service learning is a key part of the Redlands experience, with students required to complete 80 hours of community service before graduation \u2013 and many doing far more than that. However, opportunities such as internship and independent study as part of a student\u2019s class planning might not be considered at all, whether it\u2019s because students don\u2019t know that they\u2019re able to add them as classes to their registration or because the process is unclear. Studying away, although done by over 48% of students as given by the Study Away Office\u2019s statistics page, is often also not possible for students for various reasons such as financial need or class scheduling difficulties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main goals behind creating the Core Four is to help students learn about the options available to them, as well as bring to light the stories of those who took on these experiences, and showing how they can assist in a student\u2019s future career. Being able to better identify problems in the system is also something that the CAS office aims to work on while streamlining the systems involved with opening up these opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know that one of the key ingredients to successful education experience is the advising relationship, and making sure advisors are well trained and have all the resources they need. With Core Four, we are beginning to have conversations with all advisors so that they all know about such resources,\u201d Dean Rose said. \u201cPart of the reason is that students don\u2019t always know about all the resources so we need to make sure that faculty advisors know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversation guides and recordkeeping resources are some of the ways in which advisors assist in implementing the Core Four. The guide, called the Engaged Learning Plan, serves as a means for keeping both advisors and advisees up-to-date with any goals a student wants to achieve during their time at the university. The Office of the CAS Dean is also aiming to provide more information on study abroad programs or CSL opportunities that would potentially be highly beneficial for students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf an advisor tells a student, \u2018Hey I think it\u2019s going to be really important for you to have an undergraduate research experience in your junior year because I know you\u2019re heading on to become a research scientist in grad school,\u2019 that\u2019s a great plan. But where is it written?\u201d the Associate Dean of Curricular Affairs, Dr. Nate Cline, asked. \u201cIs everyone going to forget about it in the next advising session? We need the tools and so I think advisors want their students to have all of these things.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rose also talked about barriers like financial and timely graduation concerns in regard to study abroad and finding ways to break those down. The Office of Career and Professional Development, in working with the CAS Dean\u2019s Office, has also begun supporting the Core Four initiative through events like their weekly Lunch and Learn sessions and partial restructuring of its advising systems. They have also focused on incorporating more career planning into the student curriculum so students have a better sense of the job market and how to navigate it after graduating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also a new course that was offered this spring to help students use what they learned from their study abroad experiences, similar to CSL courses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A break in campus tree foliage shows the Redlands \u201cR\u201d on the San Bernardino Mountains. One of the community service projects students can participate in involves hiking up to the \u201cR\u201d to help clear it of brush. Photo by Kyle Eaton, \u201824<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Getting the word out<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Core Four initiative was unveiled during New Student Orientation this year by the Office of the Dean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow has that changed you? What are you taking with you as you complete your studies? How do you tell your story to external audiences? How do you tell that story to grad schools or answers to interview questions? When students get asked questions in interviews, it may not be the case that the first thing they think of is their experience traveling Europe or their time serving folks in the Inland Empire,\u201d Cline said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He continued by pointing out the class projects that students worked on during their college years, as well as how internships could be used as college credit and individualized study as honors projects. They were, as Cline described them, transformative and immersive experiences that could aid one\u2019s future career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cline and Rose also highlighted how the Core Four opportunities offer more personalized education and are not exclusively limited to top students. Another goal of theirs is to have the wider community get involved by attending student presentations or events that highlight various experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Core Four \u2014 community service learning, study abroad, internships and individualized study \u2014 are all options for students wanting to maximize their time at Redlands. Rose and Cline both hope that acknowledging these key components of a unique and accessible\u00a0 Redlands education, will enable students to take advantage of planning for these opportunities and graduate with a wider view of themselves and of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The University of Redlands has a longstanding tradition of service and opportunity, with many a spotlight on activities<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Over the past year, talk about some of the University of Redlands\u2019 offerings outside of classes has been growing, and on top of that advising is just a little different then before. But what is all of this \u201cFour Core\u201d stuff about? Kae Yeoh breaks it all down in this article, link in bio.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[301,349,127,260,38],"class_list":["post-2763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-community-service","tag-core-four","tag-internships","tag-study-abroad","tag-study-away"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2763"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2769,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions\/2769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}