General Education Requirements
The goal of the School of Arts and Sciences is to provide liberal arts and pre-professional education for undergraduate students that is grounded in scholarly excellence and offers students the knowledge, understanding, analytical tools, and communication skills they need to become perceptive, reflective, and intellectually self-conscious citizens in a diverse and rapidly changing world. The general education requirements are at the core of that goal.
A. Writing Requirements
Written communication remains the hallmark of our culture and is central to almost all disciplines and professions. The achievement of writing proficiency is a lifelong process, but it is especially important that undergraduate education accelerates and directs that process toward the achievement of levels of writing skills that will provide a base appropriate for professional or graduate education or for professional employment. The school requires that each student complete the following writing courses that span his or her undergraduate years*.
1. An Introductory Composition Course
This is a college-level composition course such as the Seminar in Composition offered in the English Department or one of the approved Freshman Writing Seminars. Students who need to strengthen their writing skills may be required to take Workshop in Composition or Intensive Workshop in Composition.
To fulfill this requirement, students must pass introductory composition courses with a grade of C- or better by the end of the first two terms of full-time enrollment. The director of composition may exempt students with superior writing skills from the introductory composition requirement.
2. Two Writing-Intensive Courses
After completing an introductory composition course, each student must complete two writing-intensive courses (W-courses) or one W-course and a second Englis3/24/08ement of this requirement in his or her major field of study.
B. Quantitative and Formal Reasoning Requirement
All students are required to take and pass with a grade of C- or better at least one course in university-level mathematics (other than trigonometry) for which algebra is a prerequisite, or an approved course in statistics or mathematical or formal logic in a department of the School of Arts and Sciences.
Students who qualify for placement in an upper-level course in mathematics are exempt from this requirement*.
* Unless otherwise exempted, incoming freshmen are required to complete the University’s Writing and Mathematical Proficiency placement tests, which may determine the need for additional basic skills courses.
C. Requirements in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences,
and Arts
The requirements in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and arts allow students to pursue their own interests while they explore contemporary and diverse views of a broad range of human cultures, modes of thought, and bodies of knowledge. Many of the courses which fulfill these requirements are truly courses in the disciplines that draw on the unique resources of a research university. Several courses in our curriculum may simultaneously fill more than one of the following requirements.
1. A Course in Literature
Students will be introduced to the techniques of literary analysis through a broad range of literary texts. The course will have no prerequisites unless the literature is in a language other than English. If the course is also to count for W-course credit, a student must have satisfied the composition requirement before enrolling in a literature course.
2. A Course in the Arts
This course introduces students to the modes of analysis appropriate to music, theatre, or the visual arts and might be a survey, genre, period, or artist course.
3. A Second Course in Literature, the Arts, or Creative Expression
This will be a second course in literature or the arts or a course in which students are given training in creative expression in writing, the theatrical arts, studio arts, filmmaking, photography, musical performance, musical composition, or dance.
4. A Course in Philosophy
The course will emphasize close reading, analysis, and evaluation of classic works of philosophy. This course may be offered in departments other than the Department of Philosophy or the Department of History and Philosophy of Science provided the readings consist principally of works of established importance and value that exhibit a philosophical approach and examine first principles in an intellectually probing manner.
5. A Social Science Course
A course that treats topics considered of fundamental importance in the social or behavioral sciences (including social psychology). Approved courses will introduce students to the subject matter and methodology of a particular discipline and will involve them in the modes of investigation, analysis, and judgment characteristically applied by practitioners.
6. A Course in Historical Change
A course dealing with a crucial human time sequence such as economic, political, social, and cultural change in a society or from one society to another; change in science and the idea of science; or change in literature and the arts. This course may be offered in departments other than the Department of History. The course will fulfill the integrative function of history by treating a particular set of changes, or a field of knowledge or expression, in terms of a wider society, which is itself changing.
7. Three Courses in the Natural Sciences
These will be courses that introduce students to scientific principles and concepts (rather than offering a simple codification of facts in a discipline or a history of a discipline). The courses may be interdisciplinary, involving faculty from at least two departments in their development and implementation, and no more than two courses may have the same department as the primary departmental sponsor of the course.
8. A Sequence of Two Foreign Language Courses
Each student is required to complete successfully (a grade of C- or better) two terms of university-level study in a single foreign language, unless they can demonstrate elementary proficiency in a foreign language through the completion of three years of high school study of a single foreign language with a grade of C or better, successful completion of a special proficiency examination, or transfer of credit for two terms or more of approved university-level instruction in a single foreign language with grades of C or better.
A student whose native language is not English or who is bilingual is exempted from this requirement.
9. Three Foreign Culture/International Courses
Each student must complete three foreign culture/international courses chosen from at least two of the categories in the regional, comparative, or global classifications used for these courses. Regional courses can address a single culture or society in a particular country or focus on cultures or societies in any region of the world other than the United States; comparative courses utilize a comparative perspective in examining problems, issues, or topics that crosscut regional or national boundaries; and global courses focus on global processes by examining worldwide issues or topics comprehensively.
10. Non-Western Culture Requirement
At least one of the courses used to satisfy the international culture requirement or another general education requirement (e.g., historical change) must address a culture or cultures other than those of the Mediterranean, Central and Western Europe, and French- or English-speaking North America.