From the late-nineteenth century to the 1960s, the reading of Greek and Roman classics in some form more or less constituted a "common core" of the general education program in American undergraduate curricula. The foundation of the Integrated Liberal Studies (ILS) at the University of Wisconsin in 1948 was one of such efforts to preserve the "common core," as well as a more integrated, meaningful sequence of learning that other American colleges also struggled for under the democratic and egalitarian pressure from increasingly diverse student bodies at that time. How did the seemingly elitist tradition of classical learning change or adapt to student demands for more practical and professional training? How did university educators utilize the reading of classics in their curriculum? What kind of classics did they think should be read and learned, and how? What was the purpose of the reading of classics for educators and students? This paper will attempt to answer these questions, first, by focusing on what the students in the ILS read and how they were expected to read in their curriculum, and second, by tracing the composition and the traits of the student body in the ILS. After experiencing the general education movement during the inter-war period and particularly in Wisconsin, the failure of "the Experimental College," the ILS Program again tried to create a milieu without an elitist connotation in which students could immerse themselves in the reading of Western canons including ancient Greek and Roman authors as a "common core" for realization of ideals of general education.

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