General Education Common Core Competencies

Area I: Communications

• Analyze and evaluate oral and written communication in terms of situation, audience, purpose, aesthetics, and adverse points of view.

• Express a primary purpose in a compelling statement and order supporting points logically and convincingly.

• Use effective rhetorical strategies to persuade, inform, and engage.

• Employ writing and/or speaking processes such as planning, collaborating, organizing, composing, revising, and editing to create presentations using correct diction, syntax, grammar, and mechanics.

• Integrate research correctly and ethically from credible sources to support the primary purpose of communication.

• Engage in reasoned civic discourse while recognizing the distinctions among opinions, facts, and inferences.

Area II:  Mathematics

• Display, analyze, and interpret data.

• Demonstrate knowledge of problem solving strategies.

• Construct valid mathematical explanations.

• Display an understanding of the development of mathematics.

• Demonstrate an appreciation for the extent, application, and beauty of mathematics

Area III:  Laboratory Sciences

• Describe the process of scientific inquiry.

• Solve problems scientifically.

• Communicate scientific information.

• Apply quantitative analysis to scientific problems

• Apply scientific thinking to real world problems.

Area IV:  Social and Behavioral Sciences

• Identify, describe, and explain human behaviors are influenced by social structures, institutions, and processes within the contexts of complex and diverse communities.

• Articulate how beliefs, assumptions, and values are influenced by factors such as politics, geography, economics, culture, biology, history, and social institutions.

• Describe ongoing reciprocal interactions among self, society, and the environment.

• Apply the knowledge base of the social and behavioral sciences to identify, describe, explain, and critically evaluate relevant issues, ethical dilemmas, and arguments.

Areas V: Humanities and Fine Arts

• Analyze and critically interpret significant primary texts and/or works of art (this includes fine art, literature, music, theatre, and film).

• Compare art forms, modes of thought and expression, and processes across a range of historical periods and/or structures (such as political, geographic, social, cultural, religious, intellectual).

• Recognize and articulate the diversity of human experience across a range of historical periods and/or cultural perspectives.

• Draw on historical and/or cultural perspectives to evaluate and/or all of the following contemporary problems/issues, contemporary modes of expression, and contemporary thought.