GE Categories and Outcomes
The Senate Committee on Educational Policy (SCEP) approves all General Education courses, which are clustered around six categories. Each category contains four to seven specific learning outcomes that describe the knowledge, skills, and abilities students should obtain upon completion of the approved General Education courses. Instructors chosen to report assessment data assess one of the pre-approved general education outcomes that correspond their course.
For a complete list of approved courses, as well as further information about the curriculum, visit the General Education home page.
Approved GenEd Learning Outcomes for Courses
Outcomes by Category
ANW Outcomes
- Understand and critically evaluate information and concepts in the natural and mathematical sciences.
- Use and understand scientific method to analyze ideas and obtain knowledge.
- Appreciate the value of and difference between scientific laws, theories, hypotheses, and speculation.
- Use scientific and mathematical reasoning to make relevant distinctions among ideas.
- Think critically about contemporary issues in science and technology.
- Logically and clearly communicate experimental results and observations to others.
- Analyze quantitative information and draw conclusions from these analyses.
UIS Outcomes
- Recognize, describe, and explain social institutions, structures, and processes and the complexities of a global culture and diverse society.
- Think critically about how individuals influence and are influenced by political, geographic, economic, cultural, and family institutions in their own and other cultures and explain how one’s knowledge and beliefs may differ from others.
- Explain the relationship between the individual and society as it influences (1) individual cognition, ethics, social interactions, communication practices and affect; and (2) the quality of life of the individual, the family, and the community.
- Examine how literature, history, ethical systems, scientific inquiry, or communicative practice shape our knowledge and perception of individuals and social structures.
- Using the most appropriate principles, methods, and technologies, gather and analyze previous inquiry regarding the relationships between individuals and society, draw logical conclusions about such inquiry, and creatively or scientifically apply those conclusions to one’s life and society.
UP Outcomes
- Understand the implication and meaning of technological innovation and scientific discovery for the development of human society.
- Critically analyze the cultural, economic, geographical, and political processes that influenced historical events.
- Recognize, describe, and explain the nature of past historical events and their consequences for the present.
- Examine the relationship between individuals and past events, their interactions, and the repercussions of these interactions.
- Understand and explain the significance and influence of the past and its connection to current political, scientific, and cultural forces.
UCA Outcomes
- Basic issues of interpretation. How does a work mean anything? How does one determine meaning? How can a work have numerous meanings, often at the same time?
- Questions of poetics. How do the traditions of genres and forms, materials and means of production, and philosophies and theories influence individual literary and artistic works and their interpretation?
- Questions of value. How can such creative work be evaluated? How are critical vocabularies developed? How does a work come to be called a classic? How do new works and genres become accepted as art?
- Questions of cultural and historical context. How do creative works relate to the societies in which they are produced and received? How do cultural roles of creative products, definitions of art, institutions, markets and patronage affect the creation of works of architecture, art, music, literature and other media?
EWC Outcomes
- Analyze a culture, including its political, social, ethical, communicative, or economic systems.
- Analyze how cultures are formed, transmitted, and changed.
- Compare different cultures.
- Explore the values or cultural products of non U.S. cultures.
- Analyze the influence of other cultures upon U.S. culture.
USS Outcomes
- Analyze aspects of U.S. society.
- Analyze the communicative, political, social, economic, or cultural systems in the U.S.
- Explore the diverse communities racial, ethnic, class, gender, religious, and sexual that define cultural and political life in the United States.
- Critically examine the tensions among various groups within U.S. society.
- Explore contemporary governmental policies.
- Analyze the role and influence of the U.S. in the world.
- Study events, ideas, or movements that have influenced U.S. society.
First-Year Writing Program Outcomes
ENGL 160
- Demonstrate rhetorical awareness of audience through different genre-based assignments.
- Read texts in a variety of disciplines and genres, using critical reading strategies.
- Draw connections at the level of ideas across multiple texts.
- Defend a position in relation to the range of ideas surrounding a topic.
- Demonstrate knowledge of writing as a process, including consideration of peer and instructor feedback, from initial draft to final revision.
- Demonstrate sentence-level correctness.
ENGL 161
- Conduct academic research drawing from multiple sources in multiple media.
- Read texts in a variety of disciplines and genres, using critical reading strategies.
- Defend a position in relation to the range of ideas surrounding a topic.
- Construct a logically supported argument.
- Demonstrate knowledge of writing as a process, including consideration of peer and instructor feedback, from initial draft to final revision.
- Demonstrate sentence-level correctness.