Enhanced General Education

Overview

Mission and Vision

The Enhanced General Education Program provides undergraduate students with an array of knowledge, skills, and experiences to prepare them to be successful citizens in life. The general education program provides students a rigorous academic context to develop intellectual and practical skills, personal and social responsibility, and application of learning through high impact practices. Further, to help prepare students for the new global and technological realities of the 21st century, the general education program helps enhance students’ skills in the following critical skill domains: critical and analytical thinking, problem solving, and communication. The Enhanced General Education curriculum ensures these skills are embedded throughout the major and integrated across the curriculum.

Upon completion of the general education program, students at the University of South Florida will be identified by their commitment to and engagement with:

  • Creative Thinking
  • Information and Data Literacy
  • Human and Cultural Diversity
  • Ethical Reasoning and Civic Engagement
  • Critical and/or Analytical Thinking
  • Communication (written, oral, multi-modal)
  • Problem Solving

Curricular Framework

The general education program seeks to enhance skills most applicable in the 21st global community. Its design directly supports the University of South Florida’s commitment to deliver a competitive undergraduate program that generates knowledge, fosters intellectual development, and ensures students success in a global environment.

The defined learning goals and corresponding student learning outcomes support USF’s vision and dedication to:

  • Student access, learning, and success through a vibrant, interdisciplinary, and learner-centered research environment incorporating a global curriculum.
  • Research and scientific discovery to strengthen the economy, promote civic culture and
    the arts, and design and build sustainable communities through the generation,  dissemination, and translation of new knowledge across all academic and health-related disciplines.
  • Partnerships to build significant locally- and globally-integrated university-community
    collaborations through sound scholarly and artistic activities and technological
    innovation.

Learning Goals

The following learning goals define the USF Enhanced General Education Program:

  1. Students will confront with an inquiring mind the natural, social, technical, and human worlds and effectively communicate their complex interactions.
  2. Students will use intellectual and practical skills to produce knowledge, evaluate information, and participate fully in a diverse and global context.
  3. Students will demonstrate social and personal responsibility when interacting with their community.
  4. Students will integrate and apply their classroom knowledge to the diverse world outside of the university.