Persons today are faced with a demand for a wide range of skills, knowledge, and attitudes. These demands include not only a highly specialized knowledge in a particular field of endeavor, but also a broader range of competencies and appreciations. Universities have the responsibility to assist persons to develop the specialized and general skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for leading a humane, responsible, and happy life.
Academic departments with their programs of majors and minors are primarily responsible for developing the highly detailed and specialized skills and knowledge called for in today’s world. The general education program fosters those competencies and attitudes which are necessary to the highly educated individual regardless of his or her profession. The general education program, therefore, is not the province of an individual department or college, but is the responsibility of the University as a whole.
In a democracy persons are autonomous individuals, but they are also members of a variety of social groups and citizens of the nation and the world. They are, in addition, creatures in a universe of natural phenomena and are themselves one of the complex phenomena in that universe. Educated persons must have more than an elementary understanding of all of these dimensions of the individual and the world, even if they cannot master the knowledge of all of these dimensions. The persons most likely to function effectively and wisely in the world, and the ones most likely to understand and appreciate their own and others’ full humanity, are those liberally educated individuals who have achieved the following goals:
1. Liberal Learning. An understanding of a variety of intellectual disciplines, including at least one in each of the families of disciplines the humanities and arts, the social sciences, and the mathematical and natural sciences.
2. Literacy. A command of various modes of communication, including writing, speaking, listening, and computational skills is required.
3. A Tough-Minded Rationality. Ability to define problems, construct logical arguments, and draw reasonable conclusions while at the same time maintaining sensitivity to the creative and individual nature of all thought processes.
4. A Receptivity to Evolving Technologies. An openness to the ever-widening variety of technologies developing world-wide and to the tools and ideas produced by these technologies.
5. Historical Consciousness. An awareness of the continuity of past, present, and future.
6. An Appreciation for Cultural Diversity. Respect-based on understanding and sensitivity-for the cultures produced by all the peoples of the world.
7. Intellectual Integrity. High standards of scholarship and intellectual discipline, as well as an appreciation of knowledge for its own sake.
8. A Habit of Lifelong Learning. Commitment to intellectual curiosity and to education in its many forms as means of pursuing both professional and personal fulfillment.
9. Values. An understanding and appreciation of moral and esthetic values, including how they enrich life and encourage one to live responsibly.
10. Physical and Mental Wellness. A knowledge of the benefits from and means of achieving physical and mental wellness.