About General Education
General Education that fosters independent thought, opens minds and cultivates social responsibility sets the tone for Coordinated Undergraduate Education. General Education stresses interdisciplinary studies and engages faculty in a search for the unifying themes and patterns that underlie the various disciplines, professions and technologies. Moreover, the ubiquity of new information media that has transformed learning environments makes information literacy, defined as the critical management of information resources, an essential competency for our times. Information literacy is therefore an integral component of general education. The locus of responsibility for general education is college-wide. Faculty are engaged not only their own areas of specialization but in advancing general education competencies as well. Writing Intensive Courses and Core Text Courses are examples of models that bring general education proficiencies within areas of specialization.
Overview of General Education Curriculum Goals
The college has created a General Education Initiative for the following purposes:
- to establish a coordinated system of academic and administrative support for general education; to discover points of intersection, identity common goals and encourage collaborative practices;
- to provide support for innovative projects through intensive faculty development and collaboration to explore new pedagogical models and interdisciplinary approaches;
- to develop models for integrating core courses and general education competencies with the majors, technologies and the professions.
Whatever a student's major or professional aspirations, the college seeks to provide every student with a sound general education. By “general education” the college means the development of various competencies, skills and attitudes that correspond to specific areas of inquiry. All competencies and proficiencies are taught across the curriculum and throughout undergraduate education. The integration of general education with specific areas—sometimes clear and measurable, sometimes barely intuited—are to be pervasive and may be achieved through leaning communities, writing intensive courses, core text courses as well as other models. Innovation and improvement of such general education models are to be ongoing.
The inherent complexities in educating a diverse population open up ways of positive response. Integration is one method of reinforcing general education in all three schools of NYCCT. At City Tech, the necessary breadth and variation of general education accommodates the college community's rich variety of cultures and languages. The opportunities for exploring various modes of integration are increased by the sheer diversity of City Tech's student population.
General Education often stresses the development of competencies, skills and attitudes rather than the accumulation of discrete, general education courses. Competencies fall under the broad categories of communication, critical thinking, information literacy, scientific and mathematical literacy, humanistic and social inquiry.
