Philosophy

Based on our four guiding principles, the General Education Committee concluded that the essence of a college general education should be organized into four structural components.

• Acquire and Practice Foundational Skills
• Synthesize Knowledge into Understanding
• Develop and Exercise Civic Responsibility
• Apply Knowledge and Skills beyond the Classroom

Acquire and Practice Foundational Skills

The range of academic, intellectual, or human experience is as varied as our fingerprints, but certain skills provide the foundation upon which higher education is built. For this reason, all education begins with the acquisition of these foundational skills. A common misconception, particularly among students, is that since these foundational skills are emphasized earliest in their required curriculum, they are easily mastered. This misconception is reinforced by the architecture of the General Education system itself. Honing foundational skills is a lifelong endeavor. Highly skilled musicians play scales to their dying day and celebrated athletes repeatedly turn back to the fundamentals (particularly when they stop winning). Our architecture of the General Education reflects this reality and stresses the importance of foundational skills.

The goal of Acquire and Practice Foundational Skills is to develop an intellectual and practical foundation, including proficiency in written, oral, and visual communication; inquiry techniques; creative analysis and synthesis; quantitative assumptions; information management and assessment; teamwork; and problem-solving. We have designed the General Education curriculum to encourage students to acquire skills early in their college experience and then put these skills into practice as they continue learning. In this way, the students will exercise and improve their foundational skills continually throughout their university educations and beyond.

Our General Education curriculum requires that students acquire and practice these foundational skills:

• Write Effectively in English
• Communicate in a Language other than English
• Master Quantitative Problem Solving
• Speak Effectively before an Audience
• Evaluate and Synthesize Researched Information
• Write Effectively within One's Discipline

Synthesize Knowledge into Understanding

We live in the Information Age. Each of us, equipped with network access, has the ability to retrieve so vast an array of facts and figures that the storage of these data in the form of printed text would fill one's local library to overflowing. In a recent achievement, a computer nicknamed Watson was able to defeat human opponents in the game show Jeopardy using the knowledge base that is the "World Wide Web."

Watson's victory signals a remarkable advance in computer technology because the game poses clues riddled with puns and complex wordplay. The engineers showed that the computer can sort and access a broader information base than the human mind - and can even be taught to dissect the vagaries of human language. Despite this advance, can we consider Watson "educated" in any sense of the term?

Many descriptions of the education process refer to "Levels of Cognition." Simple knowledge, as in facts and numbers, is the lowest level of cognition. However, a successfully educated student draws inferences and conclusions based upon his or her knowledge, extrapolating to new levels of understanding. While the internet can provide all people with access to vast quantities of data, only the educated individual has the ability to synthesize knowledge into understanding. Therefore, our goal is to build "knowledge" of human behavior and its products, the diversity of people and cultures, and of the natural and physical world through the study of sciences, technologies, humanities, arts, and social sciences.

We identified five areas for which the student should acquire knowledge and understanding:

• Study the Natural World
• Appreciate the Fine and Performing Arts
• Address Problems Using Critical Analysis and the Methods of the Humanities
• Understand, Observe, and Analyze Human Behavior and the Structure and Functioning of Society
• Understand Significant Links between Technology and the Arts, or between Science and Society

Having acquired this knowledge and understanding, students in the General Education system will follow up on their interests in several of the areas they have studied at the Versatility level.

Develop and Exercise Civic Responsibility

Education encompasses more than intellectual development. A dynamic General Education fosters individual social responsibilities; accountability through the study of ethical principles and reasoning; application of civic knowledge; interaction with diverse cultures and global issues. Thus prepared, students will be able to exercise their civic responsibilities at the local, national, and global level.

We have identified three areas of responsibility that each student should develop and exercise.

• Practice and Respect Critical and Ethical Reasoning
• Understand the Political, Economic, Social, and Cultural History of the United States
• Engage Global Issues

Apply Knowledge and Skills beyond the Classroom

The opportunity to apply what students have learned in a real world setting is an important experience - possibly the experience of a lifetime. Whether a career internship, a summer abroad, a chance to assist an underserved community, or any of a wide range of experiences beyond the classroom, such an exploration can be eye-opening and transformational.

Building upon foundational skills, synthesis of knowledge, and development of civic responsibility, the experiential component of General Education serves as an integrated and applied learning opportunity.

Experiential learning can take many forms, such as:

• Research and Scholarly Activity
• Service Learning
• Study Abroad
• Performance and Creative Activity
• Internship
• Field Work
• Leadership
• Teaching and Training Assistantships

Each form has a unique set of learning outcomes, but a common element is that each enables students to apply in-class learning to real-world settings. Moreover, these are the kinds of experiences that employers and graduate school admissions committees value highly.

Students must have an academic sponsor for an experiential learning credit. Students in letter-graded courses must receive a C or better.