Our updated general education program, Liberal Arts Inquiry (LAI), seeks to cultivate relevant academic skills that can be transferred to many professional contexts. It also encourages students to make connections between a variety of approaches and methods for problem solving in classroom and in real life. It is designed to deliver a meaningful liberal arts experience in a relatively small package, with more choice and flexibility for students.
A. FIRST YEAR SEMINAR
A “bridge” between high school and college learning experiences, the First Year Seminar helps students build a sound foundation for success in college and beyond, by developing essential academic skills and the ability to make connections between a variety of courses and learning experiences.
B. AREAS OF INQUIRY
Requirements under this category introduce students to a diverse array of intellectual and creative practices, and challenge them to consider complex questions in our interconnected world from multiple perspectives.
Inquiries into Practices across the Liberal Arts will expose students to a range of academic and creative approaches. Students are required to take courses that address each of the following outcomes: Creative Practice, Humanities Practice, Natural Scientific Practice, and Social Scientific Practice.
Inquiries into Self and Society focus on the analysis of complex issues centering on the relationships between individuals and social and cultural worlds that surround them. Students are required to take courses that address each of the following outcomes: Analyzing Perspectives and Worldviews, Evaluating Self in Society, Critiquing Power and Inequalities, and Thinking Globally.
C. LITERACIES AND SKILLS
Literacies and skills below form a sound foundation for academic inquiry, which are developed throughout the college career and applied in a variety of learning contexts.
Foreign Language Learning provides students with opportunities to extend their cross-cultural understanding and to practice their skills for communication across national, social and cultural boundaries.
Information and Media Literacy involves the ability to interpret and critically negotiate information as well as to create meaning via information.
Oral Communication will provide opportunities for students to develop public speaking skills that will enable them to effectively and confidently communicate their ideas in an oral format.
Quantitative Reasoning will develop the student’s ability to use numerical information appropriately when solving problems and constructing sound arguments.
Writing is both a method of disciplined inquiry and way of representing an informed position based on a sophisticated awareness of situation, genre, and convention, to be practiced across the curriculum.
Community Engagement and Reflection encourages students to engage in active citizenship, using community based learning to explore their role in society as agents for change.
