General Education Program

Noel Boyle, Director

General Education Council

Bonnie Riechert, Jane Shelby, Jimmy Davis, Alison Moore, John Niedzwiecki, Cheryl  Slay, Madeline Bridges, Patrick Schneider, Sally Holt, Andrea Stover, Stan York, Martha Minardi

Vision:   

The diverse educational communities of a comprehensive university have a common interest in liberal learning. Liberal learning nurtures each student’s capability for transforming human culture and complements professional and vocational pathways. Liberal education involves acquiring fundamental intellectual skills; becoming conversant with a variety of human ideas, cultural perspectives, and conceptual frameworks; and developing habits of ethical reflecting and acting in an interdependent world. This vision of General Education enables Belmont University to achieve its vision to be a premier teaching university, bringing together the best of liberal arts and professional education in a Christian community of learning and service.  

Purpose:

General Education at Belmont University fosters the skills, knowledge, perspectives, values, and dispositions that will enable students to apply their understandings and abilities beyond the classroom, encouraging them to become responsibly engaged in their community and in the world.

Values:

These values will be infused throughout the courses in the General Education curriculum and pursued through a wide variety of active learning experiences, all of which seek to meet the learning goals delineated below:

•  The importance of life-long intellectual growth and development;
•  The importance of moral values and personal commitments;
•  The importance of the application of classroom learning to the “real world”;
•  The importance of extending the boundaries of learning beyond the classroom.

Learning Goals:

1. General Education seeks to help students develop sophisticated rhetorical skills, with particular emphasis on written and oral language, including:
   • Effective writing
   • Effective speaking
   • Recognizing, evaluating and constructing written arguments
   • Recognizing, evaluating and constructing oral arguments
   • Recognizing and evaluating visual images and other forms of non-language-based communication
   • Effective use of technology.
2. General Education seeks to help students develop sophisticated critical thinking (inquiry, reflection, and analysis) skills, including:
   • Quantitative reasoning
   • Critical reading and reflection
   • Engaging and solving complex problems
   • Understanding systems and relationships, including interdependencies and interconnections.
3. General Education seeks to help students develop an understanding and enriched appreciation of the arts, humanities, religion, social sciences, and natural sciences, including:
   • The conceptual frameworks of the arts, humanities, religion, social sciences, and natural sciences
   • The achievements in the arts, humanities, religion, social sciences, and natural sciences
4. General Education seeks to help students develop an understanding of the complex nature of the world and become responsibly engaged with that larger whole, including:
   • Local, national, international, and global perspectives
   • Multiculturalism
   • The consequences of individual decisions in an interdependent world

* The credit hours for Linked Cohort Courses can count within the various “Human Experience–Category A & B” domains. Note that all LCCs include only 1000- and/or 2000-level courses.

** The credit hours for Junior Cornerstone Seminar can count within the “Human Experience–Category B” domains. Note that all JCS courses, regardless of the prefix, are numbered “3015.” THESE COURSES WILL NOT COUNT FOR MAJOR OR MINOR CREDIT.

*** The credit hours for Global Studies and Experiential Learning courses count within other domains of the BELL Core–or count within the major, minor, or other required or elective courses.

# The six categories of Experiential Learning are: Undergraduate Research; Community-Based Research; Service Learning; Study Abroad; Internships, Clinicals, and Practica; and Senior Recital, Exhibits, or Major Performances.

**** These course are taken at any point, unless they are taken to fulfill the Linked Cohort Course or Junior Cornerstone Seminar requirement.

The following pages provide specific listings of the general education requirements at Belmont
University as they have been constituted for each particular degree program. Within those listings, note the footnotes, which further explain the requirements and clarify some of the variations for particular programs and majors within the given degree. For information regarding prerequisite requirements for various majors, see the sections of the Bulletin that delineate the majors, noting the “Technical Requirements” or “Tool Requirements.”

• Bachelor of Arts, B.A.  
• Bachelor of Business Administration, B.B.A.  
• Bachelor of Fine Arts, B.F.A.  
• Bachelor of Music, B.M.  
• Bachelor of Science, B.S.  
• Bachelor of Science in Nursing, B.S.N.  
• Bachelor of Social Work, B.S.W.