Explorations: Liberal Arts for Life is a one-semester common course required of all entering students in their first semester at the College. Explorations is designed to foster an ongoing engagement with the liberal arts experience, to facilitate the transition of new students to the Hendrix community, and to enhance students' potential for success in their collegiate studies. The course meets once a week and carries one-quarter (.25) course credit. Areas of study in Explorations include higher education and the liberal arts, the aims and expectations of the College, engaged learning, academic and career explorations, and self-inquiry and personal development. Additionally, the seminar focuses on refining student knowledge, perspectives and skills requisite to successful academic work and integration into the Hendrix community. Each new student is enrolled in both an Engaged Citizen and an Explorations section. Explorations may not be dropped. In each Explorations section, an upper-class peer assistant is available to provide student perspective and assistance. Transfer and returning students who are exempt from The Engaged Citizen are also exempt from Explorations.

The Engaged Citizen is a one-semester course required of all first-year students entering Hendrix College. The theme of the "engaged citizen" combines the spirit of Hendrix's Odyssey Program with the College's stated purpose of "inspiring students to live lives of accomplishment, integrity, service, and joy." From philosophers and physicists to artists and anthropologists, we all approach questions about what it means to be involved in our communities, whether locally or globally, in different ways. This course seeks to illuminate the multiplicity of possible interpretations of engaging as a citizen through interdisciplinary team teaching, in which pairs of faculty from across the institution come together to form dyads and explore as sub-topic from different methodological "ways of knowing." The varying disciplinary and individual approaches to this theme are intended to provoke discussion and reflection on this topic both within the dyads and throughout the Hendrix community. The students divide their time equally between the two dyad professors over the course of the semester. The dyads can also meet periodically as a combined group if the professors deem it appropriate. The course includes an engaged learning component involving an introductory, hands-on activity that engages academic material in or outside the classroom and is tied to the content of the course.

The course covers three areas. (1) Intellectual Autobiography: Students reflect on what they have learned from coursework, Odysseys, internships, and co-curricular activities. (2) Career Readiness/ Professional Development: via class assignments and working with Career Services students identify competencies and understand how they are ready for employment or further education. (3) Research Project: Students design and carry out an independent engaged learning project. Prerequisite: Senior standing and either (a) declared major in Religious Studies, Philosophy, or Philosophy & Religious Studies, or (b) for a student in any other major, written approval of their department or program chair as well as the course instructor