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, Jane Shelby, 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 fosters the skills, knowledge, perspectives, values, and dispositions that will enable students to apply their understandings and abilities beyond the classroom, encouraging them to become responsibly engaged in their community and in the world.

Values:

These values will be infused throughout the courses in the General Education curriculum and pursued through a wide variety of active learning experiences, all of which seek to meet the learning goals delineated below:

Learning Goals:

1. General Education seeks to help students develop sophisticated rhetorical skills, with particular emphasis on written and oral language, including:
• Effective writing
  
• Effective speaking
  
• Recognizing, evaluating and constructing written arguments
  
• Recognizing, evaluating and constructing oral arguments
  
• Recognizing and evaluating visual images and other forms of non-language-based communication
  
• Effective use of technology.
  
  
2. General Education seeks to help students develop sophisticated critical thinking (inquiry, reflection, and analysis) skills, including:
   
• Quantitative reasoning
  
• Critical reading and reflection
  
• Engaging and solving complex problems
  
• Understanding systems and relationships, including interdependencies and interconnections.
  
  
3. General Education seeks to help students develop an understanding and enriched appreciation of the arts, humanities, religion, social sciences, and natural sciences, including:
   
• The conceptual frameworks of the arts, humanities, religion, social sciences, and natural sciences
  
• The achievements in the arts, humanities, religion, social sciences, and natural sciences
  
  
4. General Education seeks to help students develop an understanding of the complex nature of the world and become responsibly engaged with that larger whole, including:
• Local, national, international, and global perspectives
  
• Multiculturalsim
  
• The consequences of individual decisions in an interdependent world

General Education and the International Studies/Interdependent World Goal:

Learning about cultures outside the United States and about the interdependent nature of our world is a fundamental part of the General Education core at Belmont University. Students will fulfill this goal through one of two methods:

1. Students entering Belmont University as freshmen or students transferring in fewer than 60 semester hours will address this goal by taking the World History course(s) that are required for their particular degrees.

2. Students who transfer to Belmont with 60 or more semester hours at the time of initial admission (including escrow and challenge hours for RN/BSN students) and who fulfill either condition below will be waived from taking 3 hours of World History at Belmont (i.e. HIS 102):

• a freshman- or sophomore-level survey of U.S. history at another institution
  OR
  
• the equivalent AP credit exam for American History, with a score of 4 or 5.

2.a. However, students for whom 3 hours of World History is waived still need to fulfill the "Interdependent World" goal through an alternative means. These students must EITHER take one of the following courses:

• ENG 231, 232, or 380
  
• REL 117
  
• PSC 130
  
• any Foreign Language course
  
• any appropriate Belmont course with a "world perspectives" focus, validated through substitution forms.
  OR have transferred in one of the following:
  
• an equivalent course from another university
  
• an official, credit-bearing Study Abroad program.

2.b. Students who meet either of the criteria in #2 (see above) AND who have also completed all of their General Education requirements in English, Foreign Language/Humanities, Religion, and Social Science before coming to Belmont are exempt from meeting the "Interdependent World" goal. In other words, it will be waived altogether as a General Education requirement for this particular group of transfer students

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.

9 For transfer credit policy regarding World History, see page 76.
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