General Education Requirements
General Education Philosophy
The purpose of the general education curriculum components is to provide the Trine University graduate with skills necessary to think critically and to communicate clearly with persons in all professions. The General Education requirements are designed to ensure breadth of knowledge and to promote intellectual inquiry.
Learning Outcomes
- Formal Writing: Communicate ideas using text, data, and images as appropriate, to effectively address specific audiences within their given context(s).
- Interpersonal Communication: Communicate orally within various face-to-face interpersonal contexts employing relevant verbal and nonverbal strategies.
- Data Literacy: Demonstrate data literacy, including how to read graphs and charts appropriately, draw correct conclusions from data, and recognize when data are being used in misleading or inappropriate ways.
- Synthesis: Reflect on how mathematics, scientific, humanistic, and social science study work together to prepare them for leadership and service.
General Education Distribution Requirements
The University believes that attainment of the skills described in the General Education Philosophy requires exposure to and some facility with the modes of inquiry practiced in multiple disciplines. Thus, all students, regardless of academic program, are required to take courses within the following fields:
- Humanities
- Science
- Social Science
- Mathematic
To determine which courses fall within each discipline, Trine has adopted the guidelines of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' "Humanities Indicators" project. Trine differs from the Academy in classing history as a social science.
Humanities incorporates the following disciplines: The academic study of the arts including art history; music; drama and cinema; communication; cultural, ethnic, and gender studies; English language and literature; and languages and literature other than English.
Social Sciences incorporate the following disciplines: economics, geography, government, international relations, political science, psychology, sociology, and urban studies.
Sciences courses address the following areas of study: astronomy, chemistry, geography, geology, earth science, physics, anatomy and physiology, botany, biology, microbiology, and molecular bioscience.
Mathematics courses include mathematics and statistics.