Purpose:
The General Education experience at Paul Smith's College allows students to develop the competence and skills necessary to become productive citizens in today's world. The program focuses on five important literacy areas:
Embedded across all five literacies are the additional competencies of technology literacy and information literacy, which includes critical analysis and reasoning.
Each literacy is introduced, reinforced and expanded across the curriculum. Students are encouraged to make connections between liberal arts, discipline, curricular, and co-curricular experiences.
Guidelines:
PSC General Education literacies are delivered, reinforced and enriched across the curriculum in each program offered by the college. This allows each program of study to integrate the general education goals and learning objectives with the program's course requirements.
Foundation, structural (reinforcement) and multidimensional (expansion) learning objectives define what is meant by literacy for each knowledge area. At the completion of an associate program or at the mid point in a baccalaureate program students should be able to demonstrate structural outcomes. At the completion of a baccalaureate program students should be able to demonstrate multidimensional outcomes.
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Associate Degrees: Students must complete one foundation experience and one structural experience in each of the 5 literacy areas. |
Bachelor's Degrees: Students must complete one foundation experience, two structural experiences and one multidimensional experience in each of the 5 literacy areas. |
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The Integrated General Education Experiences:
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Foundation Experiences: The primary purpose of courses designated as a foundation literacy in a knowledge area must be the foundation level outcomes. Students may place above the foundation experience for communication and quantitative literacies through college placement testing. The Human Condition foundation experience is required in the first semester of the student's first year at Paul Smith's College. Transfer students who have completed one full time semester at a previous college with a semester GPA of a 2.0 or greater will be considered to have completed the Human Condition Foundation experience. These students will have to take either a liberal arts and science elective or a general elective to complete the required credits. Foundation experiences may NOT meet the foundation requirement for more than one literacy. An experience may not count as both a foundation and a structural experience. |
Structural and Multidimensional Experiences: Met by a variety of course options, for the structural and multidimensional experiences, one course may meet the experience requirement for more than one literacy. Courses designated as structural or multidimensional do not have to meet all of the outcomes designated in that area. Students are encouraged to choose for themselves the kinds of experiences they wish to have in order to meet these expectations. As long as the choice provides opportunities for both reinforcement and expansion of the literacy. Currently, SOC 462: Capstone Project completes the multidimensional experience requirement in all literacies. |
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All literacies can be met with equivalent transfer credit.
Please consult the course description on IQ Web to determine whether a course has been approved as a general elective experience and for which literacy.