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Undergraduate General Studies Requirements 

Introduction

Stockton’s distinctive General Studies curriculum constitutes the University curriculum commons, the place where undergraduate students and faculty with various specializations meet to find common ground. 

The program was designed based on three premises:

  • The world of knowledge and ideas is essentially seamless and is not really divided into discrete compartments.

  • The important problems that students should confront—e.g., war and peace or environmental issues—cannot be understood by any single academic discipline. Not surprisingly, modern scientific advances often depend on interdisciplinary approaches.

  • Changing workforce trends suggest that graduates will change jobs as well as careers more frequently than has been the case in the past. Flexibility, the capacity for lifelong learning and the acquisition of generic, transferable skills will be requisite in the current and future economy. 

These notions do not mitigate the importance of specialized preparation through a disciplinary major. Specialized education and the resulting expertise in a field will continue to be important to graduates, and to society at large. However, the University believes that specialized knowledge alone does not provide all the preparation that students need for the future. Both General Studies and the disciplinary major are important in a liberal arts environment where excellence is pursued. 

The distinctive feature of the approach at Stockton is that General Studies is provided through a separate curriculum and academic school. The University believes that breadth of education is not well served by simply requiring students to take introductory courses in various disciplines, as is the case at some other institutions. Traditional introductory courses in most disciplines are usually designed as the first step in a major for students who wish to specialize, rather than providing breadth of understanding for the non-major and general student. 

General Studies courses are intended to enrich one’s learning, to provide for explorations of new fields, to provoke and stimulate new thinking, to encourage experimentation, and to test one’s perspectives; these intentions are often addressed in ways that cross the boundaries of individual academic disciplines. 

The General Studies course offerings are taught by all members of the faculty in all Schools. The courses may study a problem or theme or offer a survey of related topics. What the courses have in common is that they are designed to explore ideas, stimulate critical thinking, and provide breadth of perspective for all students regardless of major. 

As the General Studies curriculum is not a foundation curriculum consisting of introductory courses, students take courses in this area throughout their college career.

General Studies Objectives

Learning is a lifelong process, and as such, one of the most important abilities a student can develop is the capacity to plan and manage learning experiences. At Stockton, the student’s preceptor should play an important role by helping the student develop this ability in the major and in General Studies courses. 

To provide concrete meaning to the general concepts outlined above, the University has defined a number of desirable goals for the general education of all students. Although these goals cannot all be met through General Studies courses alone (they also need to be addressed in the degree major), each General Studies course at Stockton is designed to help achieve at least some of these outcomes in addition to the goals of one of the five General Studies course categories. 

Primary Goals

  • Objective 1: Commitment to lifelong learning, to the exploration of new ideas outside one’s specialization, and to placing one’s own knowledge in the context of other disciplines and of society as a whole. 

  • Objective 2: Commitment to citizenship, through the ability to make informed decisions about public issues—while conscious of one’s responsibility for doing so, and of one’s responsibility as an individual for the social whole. 

  • General Competencies

  • Objective 3: Ability to reason logically and abstractly and to comprehend and criticize arguments. 

  • Objective 4: Ability to understand numerical data to be able to comprehend arguments and positions that depend on numbers and statistics. 

  • Objective 5: Ability to write and speak effectively and persuasively. 

  • Objective 6: Capacity for “reflective reading”—entering into personal dialogue with a text. 

  • Objective 7: Development of a conceptual framework with which to assimilate new experiences—and the ability to adapt it as necessary. 

General Content Experiences

  • Objective 8: Appreciation and understanding of artistic experiences as reflections of the depths and quirks of the human spirit. 

  • Objective 9: Scientific knowledge of the physical and natural world and understanding how that knowledge is attained and evaluated. 

  • Objective 10: Historical knowledge of the continuities and conflicts common to humans across eras and cultures. 

  • Objective 11: Awareness of the achievements and perspectives of people of different nations and cultures, and of different races, genders, and ethnicities. 

  • Objective 12: Understanding of the techniques, finding, and procedures of the social sciences as they relate to social structures and to evaluating issues of public policy. 

  • Objective 13: Critical understanding of one’s own values and those of others and of their role in making ethical choices.

General Studies Course Categories

General Studies courses are divided into five categories that explore broad areas of knowledge, often in interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary ways.

General Arts and Humanities (GAH) courses are designed to acquaint students with the arts and humanities and provide various cultural perspectives on the past and present.

General Interdisciplinary Skills and Topics (GEN) courses emphasize the dynamic nature of education. They develop learning and communication skills, explore experimental ways of knowing, or examine topics that cut across or lie outside traditional academic disciplines.

General Integration and Synthesis (GIS) courses are advanced courses for seniors that are designed to deal with problems and questions larger than a single discipline. They are intended to gain perspective on the self, on disciplines of learning and their relationships, and on the recurrent concerns of humankind. The requirement that students take at least four credits of GIS coursework is an attempt to help them bring together their earlier General Studies experiences into an integrated framework.

General Natural Sciences and Mathematics (GNM) courses examine the broad concerns of science, explore the nature of scientific process and practice, and seek to provide an understanding of mathematics and the natural environment.

General Social and Behavioral Sciences (GSS) courses assist students in understanding human interactions—how people live, produce, and resolve conflict as individuals and as groups. They focus on topics, problems, and methods of concern to the social sciences.

At -Some-Distance Electives

At-Some-Distance electives are not free, unrestrictive electives. They are defined as a category only when the student chooses a major program of study. The At-Some-Distance electives provide a breadth of study in courses that are in some way unrelated to the student’s major program. For example, a Sociology course would be considered At-Some-Distance for a Chemistry major, but as a Cognate for a Psychology major. General Studies courses are usually counted as At-Some-Distance from any major.

General Studies

General Studies courses are intended to enrich one’s learning and to provide the general education foundation for Stockton students. These courses engage students in the broad areas of human knowledge (humanities, arts, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics) and show the relationships among them. General Studies courses are about learning itself, about how people learn, and about what is important to learn. They often provide for the exploration of new fields, provoke and stimulate new thinking, test one’s perspectives, and encourage experimentation. Students, with the help of a preceptor, are encouraged to select and plan courses of study that will broaden their overall perspectives, fill gaps in their knowledge, and enrich their personal lives by meeting educational needs important to all students. University is not only for learning a discipline in-depth or learning how to make a living, it is also for learning how to live. A complete description of General Studies can be found in the General Studies of this Bulletin.

Requirement and Outcomes Requirement of General Studies

The General Studies credit distribution requirement applies to all candidates for bachelor’s degrees. In addition, there is a requirement that coursework be undertaken in certain areas. These requirements are described in detail in the General Studies chapter of this Bulletin.

Transfer Student Requirements

General Studies at Stockton is not considered to be a mere set of introductory courses in various disciplines. Rather, it is viewed as an ongoing process of broadening and enriching education throughout a college career. Therefore, transfer students must take at least 25 percent of their Stockton coursework in designated General Studies (G-acronym) courses.

Each student must satisfactorily complete at least 32 credits at Stockton. This would normally take one academic year but could be accelerated through a heavier-than-normal load and credit-by-examination at Stockton. If a student’s transfer program is not closely articulated with a Stockton degree program, the student may find that additional time will be required to complete the Stockton degree.

Maximally, 96 credit hours can be transferred from prior 4-year institutions. A maximum of 64 credit hours can be transferred from prior 2-year institutions.

Program Courses

Programs provide specialized areas of study clearly focused on intellectual and/or career goals. Pursuit of these goals requires that a student build knowledge systematically through the mastery of increasingly difficult tasks and concepts. Program Studies requirements are more structured than those in General Studies and tend to emphasize sequences of specific courses. Most of the courses required for a given degree program are offered in the program itself, while some may be offered in related programs.

Cognate Courses

Cognates are courses closely related to one’s major. Most degree programs require students to supplement coursework offered by the program by taking cognate courses.

Senior Thesis or Project

Some degree programs require the student to complete a senior thesis or project. In other programs a project is optional or may be required for graduation with distinction. A student enrolled in a degree program normally requires that a senior thesis or project must receive a grade of C or higher in the course in order to graduate. Detailed requirements for the senior thesis or projects are stated in the chapters on each program.

Substitution

The student may request the substitution of a non-cognate Program Studies course or other designated General Studies course for a required General Studies (G- acronym) course.

A written request must be made by the student’s preceptor to the Dean of General Studies and must be approved in advance of registering for the course. Preceptors may consider a student request to substitute any General Studies courses that exceed the minimum requirements above to satisfy similar Program or Cognate requirements, with approval of the Program Chair and the Dean.