General Education

Competencies

In addition to perspectives, students enrolled in bachelor degree programs are required to take courses to fulfill the following competencies. These are skills which the institution considers necessary to deal effectively with academic and intellectual endeavors:

(mc) - Multiculturalism

A course to provide students with opportunities to gain a better understanding of their own culture while forming or increasing awareness and sensitivity to other cultures. Through a variety of delivery strategies and effective communication strategies, the multicultural course demonstrates the contribution of each studied culture from a societal standpoint and concentrates on the similarities of each culture while respecting and embracing differences.

Focus is on developing student skills to recognize and shape, if necessary, a preconditioned attitude or pattern of behavior into new actions and responses that encourage cooperation and harmony in professional, sociological, clinical, national, and global spheres.

(aw) - Advanced Writing

Advanced writing courses build on the general college-level rhetorical reading and writing strategies students have learned in earlier courses (i.e., persuasion, logic, research methods, diction, language usage, sentence combining, and editing). Advanced writing courses should prepare students to do advanced level critical analysis and writing.
Advanced writing courses must involve writing assignments that (a) demand analysis, synthesis, and application of the subject matter of the course; (b) require substantial original composition (i.e., essays students have written to meet the requirements of one course, and essays that total at least 20 to 30 pages over the course of a semester); (c) involve multiple drafts of writing assignments throughout the course of the semester; and (d) count for at least 40% of the course grade.

(e/p) - Ethics/Philosophy

A course to provide students with the substantial opportunity to examine the bases for ethical conduct, ethical standards in the real world of daily human dealings, and the relationship of ethics and morals; to weigh a variety of philosophical answers to questions such as the purpose of human existence, freedom versus determinism, and the nature of aesthetics; and finally to develop logical and critical thinking skills in analyzing and evaluating arguments in ethics and philosophy.

(r) - Research Designation

Research designated courses introduce students to research methods that are specific to particular disciplines. In research designated courses, students will learn to (1) understand discipline-specific methods for conducting research; (2) examine trends and patterns in the use of various research methods within a discipline; (3) analyze and evaluate important discipline-specific research terms, concepts, and techniques; (4) articulate informed opinions about the value of research in a specific discipline.