CIS General Education Requirements

Area One: Communication and Creative Arts

  1. Courses examining oral and written communication practices and the nature of creativity.
  2. Courses situating creative works, and judgments about those creative works, in their appropriate social and historical context.
  3. Courses developing the student’s capacity for communication through art, composition, speech, music, or other media.

Area Two: Language and Cross-Cultural Studies

  1. Courses exploring those habits of thought and feeling that distinguish regions, countries, and cultures from one another.
  2. Courses discussing, in comparative and cross-cultural perspective, the concepts, patterns, and trends that characterize contemporary global issues.
  3. Courses developing the student’s capacity to critically analyze how categories of difference are organized within and across cultures.
  4. Courses developing the student’s capacity to understand and speak modern and ancient languages.

Area Three: History, Philosophy, and Religion

  1. Courses exploring the diverse historical, philosophical, and religious traditions that have shaped the world.
  2. Courses developing the student’s ability to critically and comparatively reflect on cultural issues both past and present.

Area Four: Social Institutions and Behavior

  1. Courses considering the institutions, systems, and patterns of governance that underlie contemporary societies.
  2. Courses developing the student’s capacity to critically reflect on the relationships within and between the individual and the institutions, systems, and patterns of society.

Area Five: Science and Mathematics

  1. Courses investigating the natural world and the living forms that inhabit it.
  2. Courses developing problem-solving skills and utilizing the scientific method to describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena.
  3. Courses analyzing the role of science in public discourse and in addressing societal problems.