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Fundamental Knowledge courses develop students’ understanding and appreciation of the fundamentals of science, arts and humanities, and the forces that shape the individual and modern society throughout the lifespan. This fundamental knowledge is crucial to understanding more advanced topics, including a major field of study.
Learning Outcomes
Physical and Life Science (B1, B2, B3)
Physical and life science courses develop students’ understanding of the scientific method as a continuous and adaptive process of discovery and communication about the physical universe and its life forms. These courses equip students with the quantitative and qualitative methods and skills necessary for understanding and applying scientific theories, concepts, and data about both living and non-living systems.
Upon successful completion of an Area B1-B3 course, students should be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of scientific theories, concepts, and data used in the physical and life sciences;
- Apply scientific principles and communicate in ways appropriate to the discipline about the process and results of scientific discovery;
- Access, critically evaluate, and represent scientific information in various forms and draw appropriate conclusions; and
- Use methods derived from current scientific inquiry to form evidence-based opinions about science-related matters of personal, public, and ethical concern.
Arts and Humanities (C)
Across the disciplines in Area C coursework, students cultivate and refine their affective, cognitive, and expressive faculties by studying works of the human intellect and imagination. Area C courses help students to respond subjectively as well as objectively to aesthetic experiences and to develop an understanding of the integrity of both emotional and intellectual responses. In their intellectual and subjective considerations, students develop a better understanding of the interrelationship between the self and the creative arts and the humanities in a variety of cultures.
Arts (C1)
Students develop their understanding of the historical and cultural contexts in which works of art and humanistic inquiry are created and interpreted. Courses enable students to participate in social and cultural communities associated with artistic and humanistic endeavors, thus enriching their lives and promoting lifelong appreciation of the humanistic and creative arts.
Upon successful completion of a C1 course, students should be able to:
- Identify aesthetic qualities and processes that characterize works of the human intellect and imagination;
- Explore and articulate their own subjective aesthetic and intellectual responses to such works;
- Analyze the role and impact of the creative arts in culture and on the interrelationship of self and community; and
- Research and apply relevant aesthetic criteria and/or artistic conventions in effective written responses to works of art.
Humanities (C2)
Upon successful completion of a C2 course, students should be able to:
- Analyze and understand works of philosophical and humanistic importance, including their temporal and cultural dimensions;
- Explore and articulate their own subjective aesthetic and intellectual responses to such texts;
- Analyze and assess ideas of value, meaning, and knowledge, as produced within the humanistic disciplines; and
- Research and write effective analyses of works of the human intellect and imagination.
Social Sciences (D)
Students learn from Area D courses that human behavior is inextricably interwoven with social, political, and economic institutions. By exploring the principles, methodologies, values systems, and ethics employed in social scientific inquiry, students come to appreciate processes of social change and social continuity, the role of human agency in those social processes, and the forces that engender social cohesion and fragmentation.
Upon successful completion of an Area D course, students should be able to:
- Demonstrate understanding of the ways in which social institutions, culture, and environment shape and are shaped by the behavior of individuals, both past and present;
- Compare and contrast the dynamics of two or more social groups or social systems in a variety of historical and/or cultural contexts;
- Place contemporary social developments in cultural, environmental, geographical, or historical contexts; and
- Draw on social/behavioral science information from various perspectives to formulate applications appropriate to contemporary social issues.
Human Understanding and Development (E)
Area E courses prepare students for lifelong learning as well as addressing challenges confronting students who are entering the complex social system of the university. Courses help students understand themselves as integrated physiological, social, and psychological beings capable of formulating strategies for lifelong personal development.
Upon successful completion of an Area E course, students should be able to:
- Describe and analyze the interrelationships among physiological, social/cultural, and psychological dimensions of human well-being;
- Think critically and communicate effectively about ethics and integrity in academic and non-academic settings;
- Reflect upon their own experiences along dimensions of well-being and engage in activities that promote human wellness across the lifespan; and
- Know how to access social and academic resources that enhance learning and facilitate positive interpersonal relationships with diverse groups and individuals.
Ethnic Studies (F)
Upon successful completion of an Area F course, students should be able to discover and critically evaluate significant topics, then compose and deliver oral and/or media-driven presentations on the topics as related to the group(s) studied in this class. Area F emphasizes comparative concepts and frameworks in ethnic studies with a focus on historically defined racialized core groups: Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Chicanx/Latinx Americans.
Approved courses shall meet at least three of the five following student learning outcomes: Students shall be able to:
- Analyze and articulate concepts such as race and racism, racialization, ethnicity, equity, ethno-centrism, eurocentrism, white supremacy, self-determination, liberation, decolonization, sovereignty, imperialism, settler colonialism, and anti-racism;
- Apply ethnic studies theory and knowledge to describe and actively engage with anti-racist and anti-colonial issues and the practices and movements that have and continue to facilitate the building of a more just and equitable society;
- Critically analyze the intersection of race and racism as they relate to class, gender, sexuality, religion, spirituality, national origin, immigration status, ability, tribal citizenship, sovereignty, language, and/or age;
- Critically review how struggle, resistance, racial and social justice, solidarity, and liberation are relevant to current and structural issues such as communal, national, international, and transnational politics as, for example, in immigration, reparations, settler-colonialism, multiculturalism, language policies; and,
- Describe and actively engage with anti-racist and anti-colonial issues and the practices and movements that have contributed to the building of a more just and equitable society.
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