General Education

Statement of Purpose

Walters State Community College requires a core of general education courses as part of each degree program. The purpose of general education is to provide students with a common set of learning experiences as a foundation for:

• solving problems of everyday life,
• participating intelligently in civic affairs,
• preparing for jobs, vocations, or professions and
• recognizing major elements of human culture.

What students need to know and be able to do to function in an increasingly technological workplace and in everyday life has its basis in both competencies and areas of understanding as a preparation for lifelong learning.

Competencies

Students completing the general education core will minimally demonstrate competencies in each of the following areas:

1. The ability to read effectively, to differentiate one’s personal opinions from a writer’s, and to develop a functional vocabulary;
2. The ability to write clear, coherent, well developed, appropriately organized, and grammatically correct arguments that include the research skills of gathering, analyzing, interpreting, and transmitting information;
3. The ability to communicate orally through informing, persuading, listening and relating to others in a clear, concise, and grammatically correct manner;
4. The ability to analyze/discuss/and use quantitative information, demonstrate a reasonable level of facility in mathematical problem solving and recognize connections between mathematics and other disciplines;
5. The ability to use the information technologies including word processing, graphical presentation, electronic communication and information gathering.

Areas of Understanding

Walters State Community College graduates will demonstrate a general understanding of the relationships between the various areas of academic study. In addition to the competencies referenced earlier, WSCC graduates will have:

• Acquired scientific and mathematical ways of thinking necessary for informed decision making;
• Developed through the multiple perspectives of different academic disciplines a perception of self in a social-historical and multicultural context;
• Developed an appreciation of beauty in nature, in literature, in music, and in other art forms;
• Recognized the value and dignity of being human, making ethical decisions, and behaving as responsible citizens and community members in a democratic society, and;
• Improved abilities of critical thinking, problem solving, higher order thinking and reasoning.