Academic Foundations Requirements

The baccalaureate degree includes three distinct and required areas of study:  Academic Foundations, concentration (major), and electives.

Academic Foundations (previously referred to as general education) provides for breadth of study across many areas of knowledge.  All students are required to complete the Academic Foundations program as an essential component of the baccalaureate degree.

An area of concentration provides for depth of study within a chosen discipline (major).  Students choose their major, but the specialized, in-depth courses they take are determined by the department which is responsible for the major.

Electives guarantee that students have the opportunity to study areas of personal interest in their own academic pursuits.  Students are allowed to choose courses (electives) from any discipline that interests them.

The Purpose of Academic Foundations

Objectives
The objectives of Academic Foundations are to help students develop and demonstrate an understanding of humanity and what it means to be members of the global community.  Students completing Academic Foundations will reflect upon the evolution of culture, and learn to identify and value responsible roles for the human being in the physical, social, and intellectual worlds.

Structure
Academic Foundations is structured to fulfill the objectives by addressing essential components of human development:  (1) Skills Development and Application, (2) Cultural Development, and (3) Intellectual Growth and Development.  Specific courses applicable to Academic Foundation are arranged in categories and selected to ensure that students completing Academic Foundation are intellectually engaged in each of these areas of human development.

1. Skills Development and Application ensures that students will develop effective writing, mathematical, reading and oral communication skills.

2. Cultural Development ensures that students will develop an understanding of the evolution of human culture and social organizations, and an appreciation of cultural diversity.

3. Intellectual Growth and Development ensures that students will pursue knowledge, integrate knowledge among disciplines, apply knowledge to the identification and solving of problems, understand the importance of personal and societal ethics, and reflect on and appreciate the diversity of human endeavors.

In addition, the structure incorporates Bloom’s Taxonomy of Thinking.  Bloom characterizes thinking as increasing in complexity as one progresses.  Students must progress beyond the ability to recall factual information and learn to interpret, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate knowledge.  The structure is illustrated below:

Evaluation
Judgement:  the ability to make decisions and support views; requires understanding of values

Synthesis
Combining information to form a unique product; requires creativity and originality

Analysis
Identification of component parts; determination of arrangement, logic, semantics

Application
Use of information to solve problems; transfer of abstract or theoretical ideas into practical solutions

Interpretation
Identification of connections and relationships

Translation
Restatement in one’s own words; paraphrase; summarize

Recall
Verbatim information; memorization with no evidence of understanding

Again, specific courses applicable to Academic Foundations must utilize this system as a method of ensuring intellectual rigor and meaning.  The structure is inextricably linked to outcomes and assessment methods and forms the basis for the Outcomes Assessment Framework.

Categorization

Students will complete 37 credits of required courses with either traditional courses, discipline-specific courses, or integrated courses.  All courses that fulfill Academic Foundations requirements are specifically designed for Academic Foundations.

Category Descriptions

Global Academic Skills
The ability to read, write, calculate, and assess sources of information are fundamental and necessary human skills.  These skills are prerequisite to effective communication of ideas and the creative solving of qualitative and quantitative problems.  These skills are important for their own sake but mastery of them is also required for a university graduate to be considered an educated person.

Students will:

• Demonstrate the ability to communicate effectively in written form by writing papers which effectively develop and support theses, tell stories, describe events, or express personal insights or values,
• Read and evaluate research materials and incorporate them into informative, argumentative, or analytical writing and oral presentation,
• Read and evaluate problems and quantitatively solve those problems using mathematical reasoning,
• Demonstrate how mathematical modeling or statistical designs are used to obtain knowledge.

The Natural Sciences
The diversity of species in the biosphere, including humans, interact with their environment, changing it and being changed in the process.  Science is a creative human endeavor devoted to discovering the principles that rule the physical universe.  The natural world is law-driven and science is limited to investigating by asking and answering questions, processes that can be observed and measured to help us understand the laws of nature and the physical universe.

Students will:

• Understand the experimental basis of science and how scientists accumulate new knowledge,
• Appreciate the goals and limitations of science,
• Develop an understanding of important scientific facts and how those facts help us understand our observations and the laws that govern the natural world,
• Appreciate the role of science in the development of modern technological civilization.

The Social Sciences
Humans are social beings.  Through their various relationships they create social life and are, in turn, influenced and transformed by the social life they create and maintain.  Social sciences represent those disciplines that apply scientific methods to study the intricate and complex network of human relationships and the forms of organization designed to enable people to live together in societies.

Students will:

• Understand the evolution of social institutions and the development and maintenance of individual and social behaviors,
• Develop perspectives about the nature of psychological and social processes and the structure of society,
• Identify and comprehend theories of human behavior and of the participation of individuals in psychological and social processes,
• Practice the basic methodologies involved in the social sciences.

History and Cultural Diversity
History is the record of human activity.  History presents us with an overview of this activity with the intent that past accomplishments and failures will serve to inform present issues.  Cultural diversity presents us with an awareness and understanding of the variety of human experience, especially as manifested among cultures, both present and past.

Students will:

• Develop a view of current social conditions and events within a chronological and historical context,
• Understand social, cultural, political and economic changes over time,
• Comprehend the international ramifications of domestic policies and how these may affect and be experienced by people in other cultures,
• Appreciate and be sensitized to world cultures.

Arts and Humanities
Through the arts and humanities, students will explore and experience the sensory and perceptual capacities and potentialities that are shared by people and that define us as humans.  The expressive arts include visual, performing, and language-based activities in celebration of multiple perspectives.  The humanities address qualitative relationships wherein judgments are made but change with time and circumstances.

Students will:

• Develop an appreciation of the varied cultural artifacts of humans throughout history,
• Foster an understanding of the variety of human expressive experiences in relation to ourselves, other cultures and the physical environment,
• Utilize the basic methodologies and practices endemic to the various disciplines,
• Explore human characteristics especially considered desirable through expressive communicative systems about how to live fully.