General Education Philosophy
The General Education program prepares you for success at CWU and as a citizen in our dynamic, diverse, and global society. The program fosters integrated learning, enhancing your ability to make connections across courses and disciplines and to apply a breadth of knowledge to real-world problems. It will help you develop skills in critical thinking, clear communication, creative leadership, ethical decision making, and complex problem solving. Combined with your major, the General Education program will cultivate curiosity, empower personal development, strengthen understanding of and respect for diverse perspectives, and build a foundation for lifelong learning.
Program-Level Goals
Program-level student learner outcomes are within program goals through a student's opportunity and ability to explore, engage, connect, create, and empathize in academic and/or real-world settings.
Explore
Explore
You will explore a breadth of knowledge, methods of inquiry and reasoning, and fundamental questions. That process will cultivate curiosity, facilitate the understanding of diverse perspectives, empower personal development and growth, and build a foundation for life-long learning.
Engage
Engage
As you engage with new knowledge, people, and perspectives, you will assume responsibility for your learning. In the process, you will develop enhanced communication—written and spoken—and critical thinking skills grounded in logic, reason, analysis, and synthesis. Combining these skills will enable you to employ multiple approaches to complex and real-world problems. As an engaged citizen, you will bring intellectual creativity and curiosity into your personal, civic, and professional life.
Connect
Connect
You will discover how disciplines, societal challenges, and cultures are interconnected. This process links coursework and community, local and global issues, past and present. Your ability to integrate learning will lead to new ways of thinking, analyzing, and interacting with our dynamic and diverse world.
Create
Create
Your knowledge and skills will empower you to ask innovative questions and envision unique projects. This process of creative engagement will enable inquisitiveness and original thinking. It will provide you with agility for success in your career and life.
Empathize
Empathize
Your General Education will facilitate open-mindedness and enable you to better understand and imagine others' experiences. As you become more knowledgeable and curious about the world, you will develop respect for diverse points of view, engage in ethical decision-making, and demand and demonstrate compassionate leadership.
Framework
The framework identifies the beginning, middle, and end of the program as Component Areas: First Year Experience, Knowledge Areas & Pathways, and Culminating Experience. Component Areas are populated with their respective courses.
The General Education Populated Framework provides a current list of courses for each component area as distributed across the program, and is updated annually. Each student's General Education program is displayed in their academic requirements report.
Program Component Areas
The main framework component areas have elements with the exception of the Culminating Experience.
First Year Experience (Engage)
First Year Experience is comprised of three component area elements: PADstone (184), Academic Writing I, and Quantitative Reasoning.
Knowledge Areas & Pathways (Explore & Connect)
Knowledge Areas & Pathways, there are eight Knowledge Area elements and six Pathway elements.
Culminating Experience (Connect, Create, & Empathize)
Culminating Experience is its own element.
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