Gallaudet University welcomes students into a unique learning environment, designed for deaf scholars and those who wish to engage deeply with deaf communities.
Within this context, Gallaudet’s Core curriculum provides learning opportunities that support the ability to be healthy, productive agents of positive change in all of our communities.
We do so by deeply respecting our Deaf and other interacting identities, and grounding into them as we explore ways to engage more deeply with each other and the world.

Three components:

Experience

Welcoming ourselves and each other to this journey of deaf academic co-creation; setting the foundation for continuously striving to better understand ourselves, in relation to each other, and the skills we all continually strive to improve.

Explore

Challenging ourselves to consider myriad possible ways of thinking, learning, interacting, innovating, and creating that lead toward positive advancement of deaf and other communities.

Engage

Practicing deep and positive interaction with each other and honing our skills for long-term engagement with our communities throughout our lives.

The Core curriculum begins and ends with VEE *

VEE101/102

Our two semesters of first-year seminar (VEE101 and VEE102) welcome students into Gallaudet’s unique educational environment with deep dives into Deafhood, our bilingual identities as ASL and English users, and multi-cultural and multi-identity exploration, all grounded in personal wellness and self-discovery, which lead toward exploration of the academic possibilities Gallaudet has to offer while opening up thinking about myriad career opportunities beyond.

VEE300 and the Gallaudet Scholars Statement (the SLOs)

VEE300 caps off each student’s Core experience with deep self-reflection on how they have grown and will continue to develop as Gallaudet scholars:

WELLNESS-GROUNDED, PROUDLY BILINGUAL, CAREER-READY CRITICAL THINKERS, WHO ARE DIGITALLY AWARE, ETHICAL, SCIENTIFICALLY LITERATE GLOBAL CITIZENS.

* VEE is the label for an ASL sign that doesn’t have a direct English translation. Its meaning incorporates the concepts of “notice, be fascinated, find interesting, analyze, observe, and watch”. When we use VEE as the name for our Core curriculum courses, we are celebrating our bilingualism and encouraging our students to be intellectually curious in both ASL and English and whatever languages they bring with them.

Students who matriculated prior to fall of 2021 follow the previous curriculum: GSR. Click here to view information about the GSR program.