General Education Learning Outcomes (GELOs)

Written Communication

1. Rhetorical Approaches: Demonstrate rhetorical approaches by addressing issues of audience, purpose, and structure appropriate to the task.
2. Writing Process: Develop flexible strategies for generating, drafting, revising, and editing.
3. Main Point: Produce a central claim that is supported by sources and are appropriate to the task.
4. Conventions and Mechanics: Demonstrate proficiency with conventions, including spelling, grammar, mechanics, word choice, and format.
5. Assessment and Reflection: Evaluate one’s own or another writer’s method of inquiry, composing process, or written work to offer a critique meant to improve the work.

See Communication Rubric (GELOs revised Oct. 2023, rubric revised Feb. 2024)

Critical Thinking

Includes the ability to grasp complexities, relationships, similarities and differences; to draw inferences and conclusions; to identify and troubleshoot problems; to collect and identify data to formulate and test solutions; and to identify how individual values and perceptions influence decision making.

Students will:

1. Problem Setting: Identify or describe a problem or question and its component parts.
2. Recognize Assumptions: Recognize and assess personal and other relevant underlying assumptions.
3. Evidence: Identify, gather, and analyze the information/data necessary to address the problem or question.
4. Evaluate: Evaluate information/data for credibility (e.g. bias, reliability, validity) and relevance to a situation.
5. Context: Identify relevant (disciplinary) context(s) including, as appropriate, principles, criteria, concepts, values, histories, and theories.
6. Reasoning/Conclusion: Develop logical conclusions, solutions, and outcomes that reflect an informed, well-reasoned evaluation.

See Critical Thinking Rubric (GELOs revised Oct. 2022, rubric revised May 2023)

Diversity

Includes Diversity General Education courses in which students will examine the diverse identities of members of society (including culture, ethnicity, sex, race, gender, religion, sexual identity, socioeconomic status, and ability) and incorporates historical context, issues of equity and access, intersectionality, and evolving social perceptions.

(adopted Feb. 2024)

Students will:

1. Identify Human Cultures: Identify and describe diverse and changing human cultures in the United States (e.g., domestic, international, dominant, non-dominant, marginalized, othered, disenfranchised, empowered, systemically inequitable, systemically equitable, and intersecting, etc.).
2. Global Cultural Markers: Describe and explain global cultural markers (e.g., language, history, customs, worldviews, natural environments, abilities, artifacts, etc.) that constitute one’s self and one’s self in relation to other cultures and/or people.
3. Environmental Injustices and Justices: Describe and explain the physical, institutional, social and cultural barriers and/or transformative opportunities which give rise to corresponding environmental injustices and justices.
4. Systematic Injustices and Justices: Analyze the physical, institutional, social, and cultural barriers and/or transformative opportunities which influence diverse and changing human cultures and impact systemic inequities and injustices (e.g., class, race and mixed race, ethnicity, national origin, age, language, gender, ability, sovereignty, sexual orientation, political ideologies, economic structure, natural environments, historical events, social movements, religion, and/or other forms of identity or intersections of identities).
5. Cultural Competency: Research and analyze cultural competency (e.g., differences, rules, biases, systemic inequities, and transformative opportunities, etc.) in one’s own or another society, within or between non-dominant and dominant groups, and intersectional identities using relevant methodologies.

See Diversity Rubric (GELOs adopted Feb. 2022, rubric adopted Sept. 2022)

Information Literacy

Includes the ability to understand information technology; use applications as tools; and to evaluate the applicability and validity of information.

Students will:

1. Identify Sources: Identify and access appropriate sources for a given task using relevant research methodologies and technologies.
2. Evaluate Sources: Identify and evaluate cues to credibility (e.g. authority, currency, partiality, limitations, and/or accuracy, etc.) and cues to incredibility (e.g. misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, propaganda, and/or fake news, etc.) for truth and intentionality.
3. Attribute Sources: Attribute, use, and cite sources appropriately for a given task to avoid academic dishonesty.
4. Synthesize Information: Synthesize information from multiple and/or diverse sources to produce a product (e.g. papers, literature reviews, informative brochures, lab reports, etc.) that accurately reflects relevant information.

See Information Literacy Rubric (GELOs revised Sept. 2022, rubric revised March 2023)

People and Cultural Awareness

Includes the ability to develop a broad understanding of linguistic, political, social, environmental, religious, and economic systems; to attain skills to function effectively as responsible, ethical community members; and to learn to value, respect and critique the aesthetic and creative process.

Students will:

1. Dominant culture: Identify how individuals and groups resist dominant cultural practices and/or define how groups exist, live, survive, and/or thrive when they are not part of the dominant culture.
2. Systems of Power: Describe the ways in which individuals, groups, or social institutions influence and/or come into conflict over systems of power associated with gender, bodily autonomy, race, ethnicity, class, ability, individual and intersecting identifies, intersectionality, language, artistic expression, religion, and/or historical idealization.
3. Impact on Cultural Groups: Explain how cultural groups have been impacted by specific historical, cultural, economic, ecological, environmental, political, and/or social actions.
4. Impact on Diverse Cultures and Intersectionality: Compare evidence of how diverse cultures and/or individuals with intersectionality or intersecting identities have been impacted by economic, historical, political, cultural, and/or social dynamics.
5. Cross-cultural Interactions: Analyze the potential merits and/or limits of one’s personal values, biases, behaviors, and attitudes to participate in cross-cultural interactions.
6. Evaluate Multiplicities: Evaluate the multiplicities of aesthetic and/or creative processes/products, theories, and/or philosophies represented in specified cultural contexts.

See People and Cultural Awareness Rubric (GELOs and rubric revised March 2024)

Quantitative Reasoning

Includes the ability to use scientific reasoning skills including induction and deduction; to discern bias and subjectivity; to perform appropriate calculations; and to understand, evaluate, model and effectively use data.

Students will:

1. Computational Skills: Demonstrate proficiency with arithmetic and algebraic computational skills, and extends them, for example, to geometric and statistical computations.
2. Communication of Quantitative Arguments: Express quantitative information symbolically, graphically, and in written or oral language.
3. Analysis of Quantitative Arguments: Select and use appropriate numeric, symbolic, graphical and statistical reasoning to interpret, analyze and critique information or line of reasoning presented by others.
4. Formulation of Quantitative Arguments: Recognize, evaluate, and use quantitative information, quantitative reasoning and technology to support a position or line of reasoning.
5. Mathematical Process: Design and follow a multi-step mathematical process through to a logical conclusion and critically evaluate the reasonableness of the result.
6. Quantitative Models: Create, analyze, and apply appropriate quantitative models to solve quantitative, theoretical, and real-world problems.

See Quantitative Reasoning Rubric (GELOs revised Aug. 2021, rubric revised May 2022)