Outcomes for General Education

Each course in General Education addresses several outcomes. Students who complete the General Education program will encounter each outcome at least once at an introductory level. No introductory course can fully meet an outcome. Rather, every course introduces or develops several outcomes. Relevant outcomes are addressed at a higher level within the advanced work of the respective majors.

1. Written Communication Students will understand the different purposes of writing and employ the conventions of writing in their major fields. Students will produce writing that is well organized, supported by evidence, demonstrates correct usage of grammar and terminology, and is appropriate to the academic context.
2. Critical and Creative Thinking Students will be able to analyze and interpret information from multiple perspectives, question assumptions and conclusions, and understand the impact of biases, including their own, on thinking and learning.
3. Research and Information Literacy Students will demonstrate the ability to access, understand, evaluate, and ethically use information to address a wide range of goals or problems.
4. Oral Communication Students will learn to speak in a clearly expressed, purposeful, and carefully organized way that engages and connects with their audience.
5. Collaborative Work Students will learn to interact appropriately as part of a team to design and implement a strategy to achieve a team goal and to evaluate the process.
6. Arts Students will demonstrate through performance, creation, or analysis an ability to interpret and explain the arts from personal, aesthetic, cultural, and historical perspectives.
7. Civic Knowledge Students will gain knowledge of social and political systems and of how civic engagement can change the environment in which we live.
8. Ethical Reasoning Students will demonstrate an understanding of their own ethical values, other ethical traditions from diverse places and times, and the process of determining ethical practice.
9. Global Understanding Students will analyze and understand the social, historical, political, religious, economic, and cultural conditions that shape individuals, groups, and nations and the relationships among them across time.
10. Quantitative Literacy Students will demonstrate the ability to: (1) interpret and evaluate numerical and visual statistics, (2) develop models that can be solved by appropriate mathematical methods, and (3) create arguments supported by quantitative evidence and communicate them in writing and through numerical and visual displays of data, including words, tables, graphs, and equations.
11. Scientific Literacy Students will understand how scientific knowledge is uncovered through the empirical testing of hypotheses; be familiar with how data is analyzed, scientific models are made, theories are generated, and practical scientific problems are approached and solved; have the capacity to be informed about scientific matters as they pertain to living in this complex world; and be able to communicate scientific knowledge through speaking and writing.