Requirements

Composition and Argument enables students to organize ideas using a thesis-based writing process designed to improve students’ argumentative abilities through critical reading, writing, and thinking skills.

Learning Goals

1. Students will learn strategies for effective critical/close reading of expository and argumentative essays.
2. Students will understand a writing process for constructing thesis-focused arguments.
3. Students will learn developmental strategies to compose well-reasoned and informed arguments.
4. Students will learn organizational strategies for effective thesis-focused writing.
5. Students will appreciate that appropriate word choice, diction, standard usage, spelling, and mechanics are important for college-level essays

First-Year Quantitative Reasoning develops students’ quantitative reasoning skills while using strategies, processes, and technologies for solving problems using quantitative reasoning.

Learning Goals

1. Students will develop quantitative reasoning skills that will allow them to appreciate the use of and feel confident in their use of numeracy.
2. Students will learn to think critically about quantitative information.
3. Students will understand strategies, processes, and technologies for solving problems using quantitative reasoning.
4. Students will learn to effectively communicate quantitative information

Fundamentals of Communication centers on developing listening, speaking, and information literacy skills necessary for academic, professional, and civic contexts.

Learning Goals

1. Students will understand the role communication plays in democracies and in the lives of engaged citizens.
2. Students will appreciate the importance of receiving messages with an open mind and critically evaluating information from mediated and non-mediated sources.
3. Students will learn to craft and present effective oral messages.
4. Students will consider how the knowledge and skills gained in the course will transfer to other contexts and other courses.

Inquiry & Identity is a transition into the Monmouth College learning community which values the spirit of inquiry in pursuit of academic excellence.

Learning Goals

1. Students will explore the themes of Inquiry & Identity as a means to engage with questions of human values, experiences, purposes, and communities and as a means to explore connections among disciplines and among diverse perspectives. Students will learn that a liberal arts education can be transformative, preparing them to pursue fulfilling personal and professional lives.
2. Students will understand key components for engaging in the intellectual and personal challenges of college and for becoming life-long learners. These components include developing a strong and consistent work ethic, adopting an attitude of inquiry, functioning from a growth-mindset, and approaching all aspects of the transition to college with tenacity and resilience.
3. Students will consider their identity and discover that their sense of self and their engagement with the community affects their quality of life and the lives of those around them. Students will consider the diverse, intersectional, and multifaceted qualities of identity, which may include, social class, race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and geographic location.
4. Students will understand that inquiry is an active process that engages learners’ previous knowledge, requires close attention to reading, and involves analysis and questioning. Students will learn how reading provides a means to connect to conversations that can develop our understanding of ourselves, our world, and is a source not only of learning but also of enjoyment

Artistic Inquiry courses allow students to create or engage with works of arts and explore the relationships that exist between arts and cultures.

Learning Goals

1. Students will learn and apply strategies for engaging with works of art.
2. Students will explore the dynamic relationships that exist between arts and cultures.
3. Students will explore how people make meaning through creating or engaging with works of art.
4. Students will understand artistic processes

Inquiry in the Humanities courses explore the diversity of human experiences by analyzing texts and allowing students to creatively express their own ideas.

Learning Goals

1. Students will explore the diversity of human experiences, identities, communities, cultures, ethnicities, arts, and ideas, learning to engage narratives and perspectives of others and understand their contexts and complexities.
2. Students will employ tools and methods of the humanities to pursue knowledge and analyze texts (broadly understood), ideas, and experiences.
3. Students will synthesize knowledge, ideas, and language, and respond imaginatively and creatively.
4. Students will learn to express their own ideas with rhetorical, linguistic, logical, and ethical clarity

Scientific Inquiry courses develop students’ skills of data collection and analysis using scientific instruments, and to consider how science is involved in their daily lives.

Learning Goals

1. Students will understand the expansiveness and limitations of scientific ways of knowing and how they apply to their daily lives.
2. Students will develop basic skills of observation, verification, collection and analysis of data, including the use of scientific instruments.

Inquiry in the Social Sciences courses allow students to analyze evidence to come to informed conclusions about the various ways that people interact with one another in cultures and societies across human history.

Learning Goals

1. Students will explore how the principles of social science disciplines are applied to human history, culture, society, institutions, behavior, and/or ideas.
2. Students will understand and apply social science concepts to analyze evidence and come to informed conclusions.
3. With a broad understanding of the complexities of the past, students will develop an appreciation for the diversity of human experience by learning about the various ways that people make decisions, interact with one another, live in communities and societies, and/or develop worldviews

Quantitative Reasoning in Practice courses allow students to explain, analyze, and interpret quantitative data to create effective arguments, propose specific solutions, and draw appropriate conclusions.

Learning Goals

1. Students will understand how to interpret and create effective arguments supported by quantitative data.
2. Students will understand how to make judgments and draw appropriate conclusions based on the quantitative analysis of data, while recognizing the limits of this analysis.
3. Students will understand how to apply appropriate quantitative reasoning as a resource for proposing solutions to specific problems in their relevant contexts.
4. Students will understand how to explain information in mathematical forms (e.g., equations, graphs, diagrams, charts, tables, etc.), and use quantitative evidence in support of their own ideas and conclusions

Community Engagement courses allow students to learn about the course topic as well as their own personal and professional identities through immersion in a project that aims to serve a community.

Learning Goals

1. Students will have a reinforced and clarified sense of civic and/or vocational identity.
2. Students will connect knowledge gained from the course to a community engagement project. 
3. Students will better understand community and/or cultural structures and how to communicate within, across, or against these structures to advance the common good

Global Learning courses allow students to learn about arts, cultures, history, ideas, politics, and/or societies in places outside of the United States. Students will also consider the perspectives of others and reflect on their own identity and social location in a global context.

Learning Goals

1. Students will learn about arts, cultures, history, ideas, politics, and/or societies in places outside of the United States.
2. Students will consider the perspectives of others and reflect on their own identity and social location in a global context

Identity, Diversity, Equity courses allow students to recognize the histories, perspectives, and contributions of socio-cultural groups in the United States, and to consider how these groups are affected by societal forces while considering their own complex of identities.

Learning Goals

1. Students will recognize the contributions, histories, and perspectives of multiple and overlapping socio-cultural groups in the U.S.
2. Students will understand how societal forces, such as structures of inequality and privilege, affect diverse socio-cultural groups in the U.S.
3. Students will understand and consider their biases as well as the complexities of group identities, recognizing that individuals, including themselves, simultaneously belong to multiple groups

Languages and Culture courses develop students’ competence in a language other than English and allow them to understand key elements of cultures in which the language is or was used.

Learning Goals

1. Students will develop sufficient competence in a language other than English to understand, analyze, and/or employ both its structural and semantic features.
2. Students will understand key elements of cultures in which the target language is or was used.

Composition and Argument: Kevin Roberts 

Foundations of Communication: Lori Walters

Inquiry & Identity: Todd Quick

Inquiry: Michael Prinsell

Community Engagement: Lori Walters

Global Learning: Amy de Farias

Identity, Diversity, Equity: Shweta Arpit Srivastava

Languages and Cultures: Robert Simmons