General education – taking classes in a variety of disciplines – is the foundation of a liberal arts and sciences education. The course work is designed to cultivate the skills, knowledge, and habits of mind that are essential in every field of study and that enable graduates to make effective decisions as citizens of a rapidly changing, richly diverse, and increasingly interconnected world. The requirements are designed to put the liberal arts in a contemporary context and to provide students with maximum flexibility in meeting them. For complete details, see the Undergraduate Academic Catalog, available online.
Summary of General Education Requirements
- First-Year Seminar (one course); not required for transfer students
- Quantitative Reasoning (two courses)
- Natural Science (two-course sequence; at least one course with a lab)
- Human Experience and Society (two courses from two separate disciplines; at least one course must be selected from anthropology, economics, geography, linguistics, political science, psychology, or sociology)
- Arts, Literature, and Performance (two courses; one exploring the process for creating artistic work, the other focusing on appreciation and interpretation of artistic work)
- Global Inquiry (one course)
- Language (intermediate competency in a second language)
- Experiential Learning (one faculty-supervised experience)
- Writing Intensive Requirement (four courses designated WI)
- Speaking Intensive Requirement (two courses designated SI)