General Education Objectives

To provide a broad education and a solid foundation for all fields of concentration and to achieve the major objective of each area, students must complete courses or demonstrate proficiency in each of the areas as prescribed. Transferred courses must be approved for application.

Literacies

Alma College assumes that incoming students will have developed the basic skills for reading, listening and studying to a level adequate for success at the beginning level of college. Programs are available to raise basic literacies of matriculated students to a level needed to succeed in courses at Alma College.

1-A Composition

Graduates should be able to:

• Make a point: state a focused opinion or idea.
• Support the point with specific evidence details, examples, reasons.
• Organize and connect the supporting evidence.
• Write clear sentences with variety in structure and punctuation.
• Use diction with maturity and discrimination.
• Master the conventions of edited American English.
• Understand that writing is a process involving recursive stages: generating, drafting, revising and editing.
• Understand that written texts change depending on one's purpose and audience.
• Move from personal forms to more public and academic forms of writing.
• Understand that writing not only helps us to communicate clearly but also helps us to think and to learn.

The writing competency of entering students is evaluated and most freshmen are required to enroll in an English composition class. Subsequently, if the quality of writing done by a student for another course is judged inadequate the instructor of the course shall remand the student to the English Department for evaluation and/or remediation.

1-B Mathematics

To ensure that all entering students are prepared for college-level work in mathematics, students must either demonstrate proficiency or earn a passing grade in MTH 101.

The College will determine the mathematical competency level of all entering first-year and transfer students. Students who fail to meet a minimal standard will be placed in either MTH 099 or MTH 101, and must enroll the next time the course is offered. Students initially placed in MTH 099 must, upon successful completion of the course, enroll in MTH 101 the next time the course is offered. Credit for MTH 099 does not count toward the minimum degree requirements.

Students who receive a failing grade in either MTH 099 or MTH 101 are required to enroll again the next time the course is offered.

Neither the credit earned in the mathematics courses above MTH 101 at Alma College nor credit earned in mathematics courses at other institutions can be used to fulfill the mathematical proficiency requirement.

1-C Language

Prior to graduation, students must demonstrate functional ability in one foreign language.

For Modern Languages, this includes:

• oral proficiency to articulate basic survival needs, courtesy requirements and limited descriptions;
• comprehension of utterances and short conversations about most survival needs, limited social conventions and familiar topics;
• an ability to read and write simple factual material for a variety of needs, as well as paragraph-length descriptions of people, places and things.

For Classical Languages, this includes:

• correct use of elementary grammatical forms and vocabulary items;
• translation of assigned pericopes;
• correct pronunciation and the ability to read aloud from a written text.

To meet this requirement, students must earn two years of high school credit in one foreign language, or pass any Alma College foreign language course at the 112 level or above.

AH-1 Creative or Performing Arts

The student shall create or perform in a fine arts medium — e.g.: art, creative writing, music, theatre or dance — and in so doing demonstrate sufficient understanding of aesthetic principles to render critical judgments.

AH-2 Literature, AH-3 Philosophy or Religious Studies, AH-4 Humanities Electives

Graduates should have:

• developed an understanding of differing world views (ways of perceiving, imagining and articulating as sense of reality) and life styles (ways of living out these world views).
• confronted and explored basic questions about the meaning and purpose of life in order to develop a dynamic personal framework for creative decision making and living in our world.
• examined values (especially moral and aesthetic) and the value dimensions and implications of the subject matters encountered.
• developed facility with the methods of analysis and synthesis, especially as related to critical and expressive and imaginative works.

Social Sciences (SO)

SO-1 History

Graduates should be able to:

• understand the chronological development of the principal economic, social, political and intellectual problems in particular eras.
• comprehend human responsibilities for and responses to those problems.
• ascertain important historical facts and their relationships and significance.
• understand and use methods employed by historians in analyzing and interpreting the past.
• evidence critical understanding of the past through written and oral forms.

SO-2 Social Sciences

Graduates should understand:

• the major theoretical positions.
• basic concepts.
• the nature of groups and social institutions, their functions and their interrelationships.
• problem areas.
• the interrelationship of personality and culture with groups and society.
• myths about the nature of society including world societies.
• comparative analysis and evaluation of political, economic and social institutions both historical and contemporary.
• the methodology used in investigation in these areas.
• value implications.

Natural Science (NS)

NS-1 and NS-2

Graduates should understand:

• the general nature and practice of science as a discipline of inquiry. What is science research and how does it compare to other forms of inquiry?
• major concepts used to organize and interpret the physical world, e.g. energy, motion, electricity and the structure of matter.
• major concepts used to organize and interpret life processes, e.g. genetics, development of organisms, ecology, behavior and cognition.
• the role of experiments in establishing the validity of scientific principles.
• value implications.

NS-3

Graduates should be able to:

• interpret mathematical and computation models (e.g. formulas, graphs, tables, algorithms).
• represent computation and mathematical information (e.g. symbolically, visually, verbally).
• solve problems and accomplish tasks using algebraic, geometric, statistical, computational or algorithmic methods.
• assess mathematical and computational results in fields of application.
• recognize limitations of computation and mathematical processes, techniques and methods.
• laboratory experience including measurement, observation and/or classifications.

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