General Education Curriculum

Loras College has a long tradition of offering a broad-based liberal arts education along with preparation for professions and careers. Both are needed for an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world. The liberal arts tradition thrives at Loras in the general education curriculum which is part of every student’s studies at the College. The model for a liberal arts education began in the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome, was refined during the Renaissance, and continues today in programs that foster critical and imaginative thinking, develop the capacity for reasoned judgment, and prepare individuals for leadership and responsibility in many areas of life.

Integrated across the student’s four-year experience, and enhanced by student learning within one of more than 35 majors and a range of experiential curricular and co-curricular activities, the general education curriculum nurtures students’ emerging sense of self and provides a foundation through which they can discover their passion and purpose.

The Foundations, Explorations, & Vocations (FEV) General Education Curriculum

Grounded in our mission, and tied to our institutional learning outcomes, the Foundations, Explorations, and Vocations General Education Curriculum develops vital intellectual skills, incorporates essential elements of our Catholic identity, and introduces students to the broad spectrum of knowledge and information that is part of the contemporary world. The general education curriculum nurtures students’ emerging sense of self and provides a foundation through which they can discover their passion and purpose.

Taken during the student’s first year, Foundations courses develop essential intellectual skills (critical thinking, communication, and qualitative reasoning skills), while challenging students to actively consider issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity.

Explorations courses expose students to diverse ways of thinking and promote the integration of knowledge from multiple perspectives and disciplines. Explorations courses are generally taken during a student’s first and second year.

In Vocations courses, taken in the second through fourth year, students reflect on the religious dimensions of the human experience, examine and apply ethical principles and values, and engage with questions about the nature, limits, and diverse forms of democracy as they critically reflect on their own talents in relation to the needs of their communities.

Total Credits Required: 33-36 credits

General Education Requirements - FEV

The Loras College General Education Program requires students complete the following:

• All course requirements of the Foundations, Explorations, & Vocations General Education Curriculum
• A minimum of two (2) May term courses

Foundations Courses (12-13 Credits)

Develop essential intellectual skills (communication, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking, information literacy) and lay the foundation for active learning and reflective thinking. Students must complete one course in each of the following areas:

Engaging Communities (FC) ‣ 3 Credits
The First Year Experience begins in August when students arrive on campus and engage in an immersive experience with their Engaging Communities class during Launch into Loras. Engaging Communities guides students in the ability to participate in productive dialogue with peers on a multitude of issues. By applying critical perspectives through multiple lenses of inquiry, students will explore the reciprocal relationship between self and community. This exploration will include participation in experiences that encourage students to reflect on the significance and trajectory of their own life and leading lives that matter, and an introduction to foundational skills of information literacy.

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Engaging Communities will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of one’s vocation as a student and their relationship to various communities, especially those that make up Loras College.
2. Identify appropriate campus resources available to students that contribute to their learning and wellbeing within and beyond the classroom.
3. Analyze course material critically, demonstrating an understanding of context, purpose, and point of view.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of foundational information literacy skills, including research as strategic exploration and the conventions of scholarly inquiry.
5. Demonstrate effective foundational oral communication skills.

Engaging Differences (FD) ‣ 3 Credits
Engaging Differences, the second course in the Loras College First-Year Experience sequence, introduces students to key concepts related to diverse identities, building on the foundation established in the fall semester by the Engaging Communities course. This course emphasizes active learning through critical thinking and reading and continues the development of information literacy skills introduced in the first semester, asking students to explore lived experiences of diversity, equity and inclusion through engagement with Loras College’s distinctive mission.

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Engaging Differences will be able to:

1. Describe the ways in which lived experiences with diversity, equity, or inclusion influence perceptions of ourselves and others.
2. Evaluate course material critically, demonstrating an understanding of context, purpose, and potential bias.
3. Articulate an informed position on an issue or course topic supported by evidence and reason.

Written Communication (WC) ‣ 3 Credits
Written Communication courses will teach writing as a means of conveying information, analyzing evidence; arguing positions; and evaluating and reflecting upon ideas and experience. While individual instructors will design specific assignments to address these aims, in general the sequence of writing tasks will move from personal to argumentative writing as students broaden their range of writing abilities.

Course Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Written Communication will be able to:

1. Demonstrate critical thinking in argumentative writing
2. Support ideas in writing with evidence and detail.
3. Organize writing effectively
4. Demonstrate an awareness of audience and calibrate written arguments to its needs
5. Use standard English for spelling, grammar, and punctuation
6. Write clear, concise, and varied prose

Quantitative Reasoning (QR) ‣ 3-4 Credits
Quantitative Reasoning courses are foundational-level courses in which students will be introduced to the collection, analysis, and communication of quantitative information, skills which are increasingly important in our data-driven world. Through this process, students will use mathematical and statistical models to understand past behavior and make predictions regarding various real-world situations. In addition, students will learn common pitfalls and abuses in the manipulation and communication of data.

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Quantitative Reasoning will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of mathematical and statistical models.
2. Pose questions and apply mathematical and statistical models to explore solutions
3. Critically analyze the presentation and usage of data in tabular, descriptive, algebraic, and graphical forms
4. Identify fallacies, mistakes and biases in the collection, manipulation and interpretation of data
5. Effectively communicate their analyses and results

Explorations Courses (12-14 Credits)

Explorations courses allow students to discover interests and experience learning in a variety of disciplines. Explorations courses examine issues from multiple perspectives to facilitate interdisciplinary understanding. Students must complete a minimum of four Explorations courses and must take at least one course from each category. Explorations courses may count toward the fulfillment of major requirements, however, a maximum of one Explorations course may double count to fulfill the requirements of a major and the general education program. Students with a double (or triple) major may double count one Explorations course in each major.

Creativity, Aesthetics, & Design (EC) ‣ 3 Credits
Students will learn to make or interpret creative works, or both. Creative works produce and reflect the conventions, histories, and traditions of the field from which those works emerge, whatever form they take, and grow out of sustained intellectual inquiry. Students will recognize that creative work provides distinctive ways to engage the world and the experience of being human.

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Creativity, Aesthetics, & Design will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the nature and conventions of a creative field
2. Demonstrate an understanding of how a creative field both reflects and shapes the experience of being human
3. Demonstrate an understanding of the history or tradition of a creative field
4. Apply perspectives from two different disciplines

Identity, Culture, & Society (EI) ‣ 3 Credits
Courses in the Identity, Culture, and Society category examine the reciprocal impact of society and culture on individual identity, and of individuals on society and culture. Emphasis is placed on analyzing society and culture as they shape human behavior; evaluating how social variables (e.g., ethnicity, race, age, gender, class or religion) influence human interaction; and interpreting the nature of human identity. A course in this category may be situated in a particular academic discipline, but also incorporates perspectives from another discipline.

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Identity, Culture, & Society will be able to:

1. Explain the reciprocal relationships among human identity, culture, and society
2. Evaluate how social variables (such as ethnicity, age, gender, class or religion) influence human experiences
3. Analyze human identity
4. Apply perspectives from two different disciplines

Scientific Inquiry and Innovation (ES) ‣ 3-4 Credits
Courses within the Scientific Inquiry and Innovation category provide opportunities for students to participate in the process of scientific inquiry, investigation and discovery. Students will address a question using the scientific method, connect their results to broader topics, and appropriately communicate their investigation. In addition, students can expect to gain an understanding of what careers exist in science as well as the overall application of science to a greater worldview.

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Scientific Inquiry & Innovation will be able to:

1. Use the process of scientific inquiry to design and run an experiment, analyze the data and draw conclusions, as it relates to an issue in the sciences
2. Explain how experimental results and scientific conclusions relate to a broader worldview
3. Examine how scientific discovery adds to existing knowledge to benefit the world
4. Apply perspectives from two different disciplines

Vocations Courses (9 Credits)

Vocations courses invite students to explore elements of the Catholic Tradition, the application of ethical principles, and issues of justice and community as they reflectively consider their own life path and purpose. Building upon the skills, dispositions developed through students’ foundational curricular and co-curricular experiences, Vocations courses develop students as reflective thinkers, ethical-decision makers, and responsible contributors. Students must take one course in each of the following areas:

Catholic Traditions (CT) ‣ 3 Credits
Catholic Traditions is the introductory category within the Vocations area, and serves as a pre-requisite to both Values in Action and Call to Participation. By promoting reflective thinking about the religious dimensions of human experience, courses within the category introduce students to the Catholic worldview, in which God’s love can be seen and experienced in and through all tangible things. Regardless of whether courses analyze the Catholic worldview from within Catholicism or compare and contrast it to religious traditions beyond Catholicism, courses in the category will further students’ self-understanding of their capacity to contribute responsibly to society through their discerned call to participation in the world. Courses within the category are taught from diverse disciplinary perspectives.

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Catholic Traditions will be able to:

1. Articulate an understanding of each of the three Christ-centered principles of the Catholic worldview: sacramentality, mediation, and communion
2. Describe the correlative relationship between sacramentality and mediation, and the ordering of these principles toward the principle of communion
3. Articulate an understanding of vocation through critical engagement with the three Christ-centered principles of the Catholic worldview

Values in Action (VX) ‣ 3 Credits
The Values in Action category develops aptitude for ethical decision making via active learning, reflective thinking, and responsible contributing in keeping with the mission and identity of Loras College. VX courses promote values discernment for ethical decision making, engage principled ethical perspectives, and integrate relevant aspects of the Catholic moral tradition. VX courses are oriented towards developing student abilities for applying moral principles within particular fields or contexts as well as reflection upon that application. Courses within the category are taught from diverse disciplinary perspectives and may fulfill both the general education requirement as well as specific major and/or minor requirements.

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Values in Action will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of a set of informed ethical principles, values, and commitments which includes but is not limited to essential elements of the Catholic moral tradition
2. Apply that understanding to particular situations
3. Critically analyze and reflect upon the consequences of the actions of individuals and groups, organizations, or governments

Call to Participation (CP) ‣ 3 Credits
Call to Participation courses focus on developing the disposition of responsible contributing. Courses engage questions about the nature, limits, and diverse forms of democracy. Students employ a Catholic Social Teaching (CST) framework through which they can evaluate and reflect on social problems, policies, or collective decisions. Questions considered include how access to economic, social, political, and cultural capital differ on the basis of, and can serve to define, group-identities. As the final course in the Vocations category, students reflect on their ever-evolving understanding of community needs and the grounds on which they are called to participate in meeting these needs.

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete a course in Call to Participation will be able to:

1. Critically compare two or more democratic systems of governance within distinct societies and their associated methods of decision-making
2. Apply Catholic Social Teaching (CST) to evaluate social issues and problems
3. Explain how the intersection of group/cultural identities and economic factors bear on issues of governance in two or more distinct societies or communities
4. Critically reflect on vocation as a call to participation in society

Integrative Capstone (IN)

Taken as part of a major, the Integrative Capstone requires students evaluate the relationship between their emerging vocational identity and their curricular and co-curricular experiences. This evaluation builds on past exercises in reflecting thinking about vocation in the First-Year Experience, Catholic Traditions, and Call to Participation courses. Students must take one course designated as an Integrative Capstone (IN).

Common Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete an Integrative Capstone will be able to:

1. Evaluate how their college experience relates to their emerging vocational identity