Student Learning Outcomes
Area I: Effective Communication
In a Written Composition Course, students will:
- Enact rhetoric by consciously constructing persuasive texts. (Note: Rhetoric implies audience awareness and expectations of making explicit choices about form and content.)
- Engage in and practice different research methods, which include analyzing and using sources and developing primary research.
- Share writing and composing process with your instructor, peers, and/or the university community and account for the impact of such interactions on composition.
- Demonstrate awareness of conventions of academic research processes, including documentation systems and their purposes.
- Compose using digital technologies, gaining awareness of the possibilities and constraints of electronic environments.
In an Oral Communication course, students will:
- Organize ideas for multiple extemporaneous speaking contexts.
- Employ techniques for effective verbal and non-verbal delivery in public speeches.
- Use language to connect with audience members of diverse backgrounds.
- Include supporting material in ethical ways to enhance oral arguments.
- Manage and reduce communication apprehension when giving speeches for public audiences.
In an Upper-Level Writing Intensive Courses in the Major, students will:
- Literacy: Learn and practice flexible strategies for reading and writing for different purposes in a discipline.
- Rhetorical Awareness: Write in ways that achieve the purposes for writing and addresses the expectations of audiences in disciplinary contexts.
- Research and Inquiry: Learn to engage in inquiry and develop processes for research applicable to and acceptable within one’s discipline.
- Genre Awareness: Gain familiarity with and use discipline-specific genres and appropriate modalities to communicate information.
- Disciplinary Conventions: Understand and follow the conventions for communicating, disseminating, and interpreting information in a discipline.
- Reflection: Cultivate a reflective mindset for analyzing writing processes and constructing plans for subsequent writing through assigned meaningful reflection on writing practices and experiences.
Area II: Quantitative Reasoning
In a Quantitative Reasoning Course, students will learn to solve real-life problems using a mathematical modeling process. They will learn to:
- Build an appropriate model.
- Estimate an answer to the problem
- Identify important components of the model
- Collect or generate appropriate data
- Analyze the situation using arithmetic, geometric, algebraic, and probabilistic or statistical methods.
- Use the model to solve the problem.
- Propose a solution
- Evaluate the reasonableness of the solution.
- Communicate the results of their analysis.
- Share the findings in oral or written reports using appropriate mathematical language.
- Write summaries to explain how they reached their conclusions.
- Communicate quantitative relationships using symbols, equations, graphs, and tables.
- Evaluate the model.
- Draw other inferences from the model.
- Identify the assumptions of the model
- Discuss the limitations of the model.
Area III: Perspectives on a Diverse World
In the Global Awareness course, students will:
- Explore specific global issues influencing diverse nations and/or cultures, along with their interrelations within the global community.
- Explore their own culture and cultural practices and how these relate to the cultures and cultural practices of others in the global community.
- Explore the social and historical dynamics that create and influence nations, governments, global alliances, and global conflicts.
- Explore the causes and consequences of social, cultural, and racial intolerance in the world.
- Analyze and synthesize information from diverse sources to make informed decisions regarding global issues.
In the U.S. Diversity course, students will:
- Examine the complexity of their own cultural identities and how these relate to the cultural identities of others in the U.S.
- Explore the causes and consequences of social intolerance in the U.S.
- Examine the differences between social intolerance and institutionalized racism, ethnocentrism, and exclusion in the U.S.
- Explore how diversity has affected and continues to affect income distribution, economic mobility, political access, and the democratic process in the U.S.
- Develop an awareness of alternative values, views, and communication styles in the U.S.
Area IV: Knowledge of the Disciplines
In the Arts courses, students will:
- Acquire basic knowledge and skills in the use of the vocabularies, materials, tools, techniques, and intellectual methods in an arts discipline.
- Examine the relationship between creative and critical thinking.
- Learn the relationship between content and form.
- Begin to understand historical development in an arts discipline.
- Develop ability to evaluate work in an arts discipline.
- Learn to define and solve artistic problems.
In Humanities courses, students will:
- Contextualize and think critically about texts, ideas, and genres in the humanities.
- Use and construct arguments.
- Reflect on personal growth with respect to imagination, empathy, or social and political agency using the methods of the humanities.
- Draw connections between course content and contexts outside of the classroom using the disciplinary tools of the humanities.
In Foreign Language courses, students will:
- Communicate at a basic functional level in a language other than their own native language.
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of the relationship between culture and language.
- Use basic forms and structures of a language in communicating in that language.
In Social Science courses, students will:
- Use the social science methods or concepts to examine power relationships by considering the complexity within societies/cultures/economies or variation among societies/cultures/economies.
- Apply social science methods or concepts to address questions in the social sciences.
- Reflect on how your learning in the class has deepened your understanding of how a particular aspect of society/culture/economy works.
- Evaluate a claim about the social world using at least one method or concepts in the social sciences to make informed decisions about social/political/economic issues.
In Natural Science courses, students will:
- Attain a basic knowledge of scientific laws that govern the universe.
- Solve problems using scientific principles and provided data.
- Using methods consistent with the discipline, gather information that is of a quality appropriate for analysis.
- Solve problems using scientific principles and original data gathered using methods consistent with the discipline.
- Interpret, evaluate, and analyze scientific information presented in the media to become a scientifically literate citizen.
Learning Beyond the Classroom
In Self and Well-Being experiences, students will:
- Learn to achieve a balance between education, work, and leisure.
- Choose behaviors and environments that promote health and reduce risk.
- Develop skills and habits that aid in future life and career pursuits.
In Community Service, Citizenship and Leadership experiences, students will:
- Participate in the development, maintenance, and/or change of community standards and norms.
- Participate in service/volunteer activities.
- Develop leadership skills.
- Develop skills and habits that aid in future life and career pursuits.
- Develop and practice empathy for others.
- Acquire skills for working cooperatively with others.
In Cultural and Academic Activities and Events experiences, students will:
- Understand and appreciate the relationship between curricular and co-curricular activities.
- Experience and feel part of the campus community.
- Appreciate campus activities and events that broaden their academic experiences.
In Career and Professional Development experiences, students will:
- Consider their careers and futures as professionals in reference to what they have achieved already, what they are doing currently, and what their interests and goals are.
- Explore various career and professional opportunities through structured channels.
In International and Multicultural experiences, students will:
- International:
- Appreciate cultures outside of the U.S.
- Understand how different cultures approach social problems.
- Acquire the perspective of a cultural minority.
- Acquire the skills necessary to function in another culture.
- Multicultural:
- Understand and appreciate cultures within the U.S.
- Appreciate various forms of cultural expression.
- Communicate effectively across cultures within the U.S.
In Undergraduate Research experiences, students will:
- Learn to carry out self-directed or independent learning projects.
- Collaborate with or be mentored by a faculty member.
- Appreciate the value of learning for self-understanding and actualization.
- Appreciate the value of intellectual and critical engagement with local and global issues.