Building upon the best in contemporary high school curricula, the Minerva Baccalaureate is a transformative four-year program that teaches essential skills across disciplines. The program blends self-paced coursework with engaging peer-based class time, offering the advantages of both individualized and fully active learning techniques. Students learn in a fast-paced format that interweaves core subjects to accelerate understanding, capability, and growth.
A new standard of quality was introduced today, the Minerva Baccalaureate. It’s a new interdisciplinary high school course of study designed around critical career competencies.
The Minerva Baccalaureate accelerates student learning, while helping high schools become more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. The four-year curriculum incorporates online learning modalities based on the science of learning, so students gain both broadly applicable knowledge and individualized learning across language arts, science, social studies, math and computer science, and personal skills development.
The first three years entail advanced high school learning, with the fourth year entirely devoted to college-level coursework that includes a final capstone project. Graduates of the program receive a fully accredited high school diploma, as well as the Minerva Baccalaureate diploma, which includes 32 units of college credit.
A highly structured, interwoven curriculum design treats core subjects in a holistic manner, highlighting a series of motifs — conceptual patterns that recur within and across numerous disciplines. This interweaving of ideas is central to a coherent understanding of key concepts, the development of competencies, and the ability to transfer knowledge to new contexts.
The motifs provide a basis for recognizing the interconnections among categories, modalities, and applications of knowledge. For example, the Constraints & Allowances motif can be used to understand how the structure of a molecule enables it to perform a specific function, how particular written forms support distinct communication goals, as well as how certain geographic attributes can inhibit or give rise to discrete social and economic structures.
Following are twelve motifs, used across the curriculum:
The shared learning outcomes that transcend disciplines, enable the creation of activities and assignments that promote development of precise skills, while allowing specific support and guidance for individual students.
If your high school is interested in offering the Minerva Baccalaureate, connect with us.