General Education Requirements: Procedures

Certain courses, such as Writing 2, 3, and 5, language courses numbered 1, 2 and 3 or equivalents, Independent Study courses, TUCK courses, and all graduate courses (courses numbered 100 and higher) do not qualify to satisfy any part of the General Education requirements. Beginning in the 2021-2022 academic year, First-Year Seminars do not satisfy General Education requirements (Distributive or World Culture Requirements). All other courses may potentially satisfy one or more of these requirements. Departments and programs must propose their courses for such credit and have the proposals approved by the faculty Committee on Instruction (COI). Courses that have already received such approval are noted in this Catalog with codes described below. The exact category of each offering appear in the Timetable of Class Listings for each term.

While every effort has been made in this Catalog to provide information that is as accurate and complete as possible with regard to the categories satisfied by courses in the curriculum, it is inevitable that a few changes or additions will occur in the period between the time when this Catalog is published and before students elect courses for a term. Thus, information provided in the Timetable of Class Listings for each term will officially supersede that found in this Catalog (or in any other publication such as Department/Program websites). Students should take great care to check the distributive and world culture categories listed on the Timetable of Class Listings for the specific term in which they register for a course. These categories may, or may not, match what is listed in this Catalog.

It should be noted that some courses might almost equally well fall into either of two categories. However, with one exception noted below, each course may satisfy only one category for the Distributive requirement, and only one category for the World Culture requirement. In such situations a decision, which may be somewhat arbitrary, must be made as to which category to select. Students must follow the decision that has been made by the COI; there is no appeal of this decision, nor may students petition (then or later) to have a course count for them in a category other than the one selected by the department or program and approved by the COI. In cases where the category of a course has been changed, the category in effect for the term in which the course was taken will be used.

The following phrase or codes are used in the course listings in this Catalog to indicate the categories for each course:

World Culture Requirement (WCult):

Distributive Requirement (Dist):

Each course listing in the ORC/Catalog has information on General Education categories. For example, ‘Dist: ART, WCult: NW’ indicates that the course in question satisfies the Art category for the Distributive requirement and the Non-Western category of the World Culture Requirement. If no listing occurs (for example, if WCult does not appear) then the course does not satisfy any part of the requirement in question.

In the Distributive requirement, certain courses satisfy both the International and Comparative Studies category and a second category, and, for example, would be listed in the ORC/Catalog and Timetable as ‘Dist: INT or ART’. However, in each case, a given course can satisfy only one requirement for any individual student (that is, in the example given, either INT or ART but not both). The INT category is the only category under the Distributive requirement that can be combined with another category in this way.

Note that the DartWorks degree audit may indicate that either INT or ART are complete in the example above, regardless of what the student may have ideally chosen. It selects a "best fit." In the end, however, as the student progresses, it will adjust.