Creativity Core Curriculum
Creating a Confident & Flexible Student Mindset for Enduring Success
The mission of Jefferson’s Creativity Core Curriculum is to cultivate a confident and flexible student mindset through learning opportunities that explore individual and collaborative creative aptitude and equip students to yield novel and valuable results. We’re making the case for a creativity-focused education. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has brought change of an exponential scale and new connections among previously unrelated fields are rapidly transforming the workplace. This demands a proactive, immediate and ongoing evolution in education.
The Curriculum
All exceptional endeavors and every academic discipline require human creativity. The Jefferson Creativity Core Curriculum will help you to expand your creative capacity so that you are equipped to work on the world’s most complex problems in whatever discipline you choose.
Creative Making Workshops
Our workshops—which require no prior topic knowledge—build students’ creative confidence by providing students with the opportunity and resources to experiment in a risk-free environment in absence of expectations and deadlines.
Creativity for Utopian Futures
Now is the time to dream ambitiously and collaborate to imagine futures worth striving for. Human creativity is key to envisioning just, sustainable, and inspiring possibilities for the benefit of generations to come. This year's theme, "Creativity for Utopian Futures" examines how transformative thinking can spark new approaches to global challenges that impact us all.
We Make the Case for Creativity
Check out our recap of the past year and learn why our unique creativity-focused education gives our students the advantage and helps them to thrive in their work and life.
I felt that we were able to express ourselves in a way other classes don’t have the space for.
My creative making workshop reignited my creative spark, which helped me immensely in all of my courses.
This workshop changed my ideas of creativity because it reminded me that creativity does not mean perfection and unexpected circumstances may lead to interesting results.
Frequently Asked Questions
From answering how your intended major relates to the Creativity Core Curriculum, to how we incorporate the curriculum into a first-year experience and throughout your time at Jefferson, our FAQs address many of your questions.
Creativity Core Curriculum by the Numbers
Creative Making Workshops in 2025-26
Number of workshops that highlight community & belonging
Students served by the curriculum in 2025-26
Feature Story Jefferson’s Distinctive Creativity Core Curriculum Prepares Students with Skills for Today & Beyond
On a recent Saturday afternoon on Jefferson’s East Falls Campus, dozens of students tested their acting skills, explored creative problem-solving through puzzles, planned a mock trip to Italy and learned how to identify thousands of plants
Through Creative Making Workshops like these—one component of Jefferson’s Creativity Core Curriculum—all Jefferson undergraduates learn that creativity doesn’t just apply to specific disciplines.
Nexus Learning
At Jefferson, we've always believed we needed to create the professionals of the future. (We've been doing it since 1884.) Our method? We call it Nexus Learning™ - our signature approach that is making Jefferson a transformative force in higher education. We are preparing students for the future of work by ensuring development of critical skills employers seek for tomorrow’s work place.
The Hallmarks Program for General Education
Jefferson’s general education program for pre-professional students is a carefully designed sequence of courses that all Jefferson undergraduate students complete. These 40 credits of cumulative general education build the essential skills to prepare you for your career throughout your undergraduate years.