Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) | Bachelor of Business Admin (B.B.A.) | Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) | Bachelor of Music (B.M.) | Bachelor of Science (B.S.) | Bachelor of Science in Nursing (B.S.N.) | Bachelor of Social Work (B.S.W.) | General Education Courses

General Education Program
Annette M. Sisson, Director

General Education Council

Stuart Burris, Jimmy Davis, Tim Johnson, Neal King, Marcia McDonald, Sheron Salyer, Richard Shadinger, Judy Skeen, Tommy Wooten.

Vision:

The diverse educational communities of a comprehensive university have a common interest in liberal learning. Liberal learning nurtures each student's capability for transforming human culture and complements professional and vocational pathways. Liberal education involves acquiring fundamental intellectual skills; becoming conversant with a variety of human ideas, cultural perspectives, and conceptual frameworks; and developing habits of ethical reflecting and acting in an interdependent world. This vision of General Education enables Belmont University to achieve its vision to be a premier teaching university, bringing together the best of liberal arts and professional education in a Christian community of learning and service.

Purpose:

General Education at Belmont University helps students develop the fundamental intellectual skills that are essential to learning in all the academic disciplines of the university. These diverse abilities contribute to gaining knowledge, achieving perspective, and constructing and discerning relationships. Thus, the purpose of the General Education program is to provide a common educational experience that is academically challenging, that enriches students' understandings of themselves and the world around them, and that enables them - as men and women of diverse backgrounds - to engage and transform the world with disciplined intelligence, compassion, courage, and faith.

Goals:

1. General Education seeks to foster each student's ability:
• to use written and spoken languages effectively;
• to recognize, evaluate, and construct arguments, both written and oral;
• to understand the nature of mathematical thought;
• to employ information technology;
• to engage and solve complex problems.
  
  
2. General Education seeks to help students become conversant with the conceptual frameworks and achievements of the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences.
   
   
3. General Education fosters intellectual skills and academic conversancies so that students will develop habits of reflecting and acting which incorporate personal moral commitment and an enriched understanding of the Christian faith and the consequences of individual decisions in an interdependent world.

Curricular Framework:

Students at Belmont University will take courses in the following areas in order to fulfill their 41-hour General Education requirement:

The following pages provide specific listings of the General Education requirements at Belmont University as they have been constituted for each particular degree program. Within those listings, note the footnotes, which further explain the requirements and clarify some of the variations for particular programs and majors within the given degree. For information regarding prerequisite requirements for various majors, see the sections of the Bulletin that delineate the majors, noting the "Technical Requirements" or "Tool Requirements."

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

1 Note that some colleges, schools, programs, or majors may require accelerated computer proficiency certification.

2 Education majors completing a PreK-4 or a 5-8 license, and students completing any other appropriate teaching licensure program, must take MUH 214 (4 hrs) - or, alternatively, MUH 216 (2 hrs) + EDU 254 (2 hrs) - for the Fine Arts requirement. Also, BA students with a major in Music should take MUH 211 to fulfill the Fine Arts requirement.

3 Correspondence work in Foreign Language is not accepted as credit for Belmont students. Also, students who have had three years or more of a Foreign Language in high school may be ready to begin language study at Belmont with the 200-level courses. Incoming students with previous language study are encouraged to consult instructors in each language to determine specific placement.

4 Exceptions: As specified in the individual course descriptions, courses that will not fulfill the Humanities requirements in General Education are ENG 90, 100, 101, 102, 103, 110, 199, 200, 203, 210, 344; ENGW 305, 396, 397; PHI 199, 225, 299, 311, 315, 316, 322, 333, 399, 405, 410, 420, 425, 440, 490, 499.

5 Philosophy majors and minors must take PHI 160 as part of the Humanities requirement.

6 Language majors must take at least one ENG course in literature, at the 200 level or higher.

7 Classics majors must take ENG 231 as part of their Humanities requirement.

8 Military Science and/or Marching Band do not substitute.