Emory identifies college-level general education competencies and the extent to which students have attained them as part of periodic student learning outcomes assessment processes. Emory has two colleges and three schools with undergraduate degree programs. Emory College of Arts and Sciences and Oxford College admit students as first-year students who must complete general education requirements; the Business, Medical, and Nursing schools admit transfer students who must complete general education requirements prior to admission.
Students who enter Fall 2023 or later are under the new Blue Plan. This includes the following requirements:
All first-year students in Emory College are required to complete a set of three courses, jointly helping them achieve “Success at Emory” during their first year at Emory. This timed requirement supports the transition to Emory by helping students to develop skills for academic and personal success. It builds community among incoming students while familiarizing them with the liberal arts process and showcasing the importance of health and well-being.
Exploration courses ensure that students take courses in a variety of fields, across the liberal arts curriculum. These courses are the foundation of the general education experience, giving students experience in a variety of academic areas at the outset of their studies at Emory, and introducing them to different intellectual approaches, tools, and evidence. Because this area serves as the foundation for students’ academic work, students must complete these requirements in their first four regular semesters at Emory.
Communication-intensive courses are designed to improve communication skills through frequent writing, speaking, listening, and designing across academic and non-academic situations. Teachers across discourse communities encourage, guide, and communicate high standards to students through instruction and example. Communication-intensive classes focus on both the product and the process of developing appropriate and effective communication skills. Learning to be an ethical communicator is a focus of the courses, and instruction (materials, assignments, feedback) is designed to foster this growth in students.
Building Community courses foster connections, relationships, and understanding within and between diverse communities by encouraging students to reflect upon those to which they belong and those with whom they interact on many levels, from local to international settings. During their first three years at Emory, students are required to take one in the Race & Ethnicity category and two courses in Intercultural Communications. These courses must be completed before a student gains senior standing.
Exploration through “hands-on” experience and application has been shown to dramatically enhance overall student learning and provide students with an opportunity for synthesis and reflection. Learning by doing provides deeper, more enduring knowledge, and allows students to wrestle with the difficulties of reaching a conclusion or result. These opportunities for hands-on exploration will involve intentionally designed, inquiry-driven, and sustained learning opportunities in which students reflect upon and use their knowledge through questioning, creating, and applying what they have learned from their academic courses. In addition, these experiences may identify new areas of knowledge students need to acquire, which can inform subsequent course selections. These experiences could range from enhanced laboratory courses to archival research, to community-engaged learning, to study abroad, to independent research, to public scholarship, to the applied arts, to relevant internship experiences.
Related SACSCOC Standard:
8.2. The institution identifies expected outcomes, assesses the extent to which it achieves these outcomes, and provides evidence of seeking improvement based on analysis of the results in the areas below:
8.2.b. Student learning outcomes for collegiate-level general education competencies of its undergraduate degree programs. (Student outcomes: general education)