Tools for Critical Engagement

Requirements

• Diversity in the United States (course code: DUSC)
• Environmental Connections (course code: EVCN)
• Global Connections (course code: GBCC)
• Quantitative Reasoning (course code: CCQR)

Diversity in the United States

One course from the designated list of courses

Students will acquire contextualized knowledge about some aspect of complex group interactions in the United States. Students will use concepts and tools of inquiry from at least one discipline to analyze issues related to the diversity of cultural experiences in the United States. Students will reflect critically on the ways in which diversity (broadly understood) within the United States shapes the experience of citizens and persons residing in the United States.

Environmental Connections

One course from the designated list of courses

Students will analyze, evaluate and synthesize complex interrelationships between humans and the natural world. Students will evaluate critically their personal connections to the natural world in one of the following ways: reasoning about ethical issues, directly experiencing the natural world, connecting to their community or relating individual choices to larger societal goals.

Students will apply knowledge of the physical, cultural or social connections between humans and the natural world, according to their interests and disciplinary preferences, in at least one of the following ways:

• Tracing the fundamental physical interconnections between humans, other species and the environment.
• Explaining how natural systems function and how human actions affect them.
• Distinguishing between human impacts and natural changes.
• Elucidating the concept of sustainability.
• Analyzing past cultural constructions of the environment.
• Analyzing current cultural narratives that shape our relationship to the environment.
• Analyzing societal mechanisms that influence our relationship to the environment.
• Assessing governance and political conflicts regarding human-environment relationships.
• Understanding the role of technological, economic and scientific knowledge in environmental decision-making and power relations between social actors.

Global Connections

One course from the designated list of courses

Students will use concepts and tools of inquiry to examine the beliefs, history, social experiences, social structures, artistic or literary expressions, and/or traditions of one or more cultures or societies located outside the United States.

OR

Students will use appropriate tools of inquiry to understand the interdependent nature of the global system and the consequences this interdependence has for political, economic and social problems.

Quantitative Reasoning

One course from the designated list of courses

Students will demonstrate college-level knowledge of a body of mathematical and/or statistical techniques suitable for modeling and analyzing real-world questions/situations, and will gain some experience in this modeling, including building, describing, testing, analyzing and making predictions from such models.

OR

Based on a focused course experience, students will apply basic mathematical and/or statistical techniques at a college level of sophistication in the analysis and modeling of real-world questions or problems, including experience in building, describing, testing, analyzing and making predictions from such models.

AND

Students will formulate questions and propositions for quantitative analysis, translate the question into a form appropriate for the chosen quantitative model, and interpret and evaluate the results of the model in ways meaningful to the problem at hand. Students will demonstrate the ability to assess the validity and limitations of quantitative models and an understanding of the role of the assumptions made in the construction of these models.

Note: One course from each of the Tools for Critical Engagement categories may also count as a course within the Disciplinary Perspectives categories, but not the Disciplinary Perspectives course(s) used to meet the CCC learning goals.