Your liberal education at Appalachian begins with the General Education Program.  About one-third of the courses you will take during your college years will be General Education courses from across the university.  In them, you will encounter new perspectives on important subjects and explore connections between different areas of study.  The General Education Program is designed to help achieve four goals:

1.     Thinking Critically and Creatively

2.     Communicating Effectively

3.     Making Local to Global Connections

4.     Understanding Responsibilities of Community Membership

The Program also encourages you to integrate diverse information and skills as you try and understand things that matter in your world.  You begin this practice in your First Year Seminar, where you examine a topic you are interested in from at least two different points of view.  You continue the practice in your multi-disciplinary Perspectives themes, where you study one theme using the tools, methods, and knowledge of at least two different disciplines.  The culmination of this practice comes in your Capstone experience in your major, where you bring together all the skills and knowledge you have learned in General Education courses and major courses and apply it to a project closely related to your future vocation.

In addition to these integrative experiences, your General Education writing courses will help you develop your writing skills and gradually tailor them to communicating more and more effectively within your major field.

The curriculum also includes courses in two other areas essential to your long term success and well-being.  Your Quantitative Literacy course will help you learn how to use mathematical concepts and other quantitative concepts to think and communicate more effectively.  Your Wellness Literacy course will help you understand and evaluate how your behaviors and lifestyle choices affect your physical and emotional wellness.

3 s.h. First Year Seminar
3 s.h. First Year Writing
3 s.h. Second Year Writing
4 s.h. Quantitative Literacy
2 s.h. Wellness Literacy
29 s.h. Perspectives (including 3 s.h. each in fine arts, historical studies, literary studies)
_____
44 s.h. TOTAL 

First Year Seminar  (FYS)

• The seminar engages you in a shared process of inquiry with a faculty member around a broad, interdisciplinary topic or question. It is designed to help you develop the research and critical thinking skills that are essential for success in college and make connections with faculty, peers, the university, and the curriculum.

Writing Courses (FYW & SYW)

• First year composition and rhetoric introduces you to the basic expectations of academic writing at the university level.
  
• Second year composition and rhetoric focuses on Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and helps you develop the ability to tailor your writing to specific, diverse audiences.
  

Quantitative Literacy

• These courses help you develop reasoning and numerical skills related to quantitative literacy. This content focuses on mathematics, exploratory data analysis, statistics, probability, or modeling.

Wellness Literacy

• These courses are designed to give you a strong foundation in science-based health and fitness.
  

Perspectives

• The bulk of General Education credit hours are organized into four integrated, multidisciplinary units called Perspectives: (1) Aesthetic Perspectives, (2) Historical and Social Perspectives, (3) Local to Global Perspectives, and (4) Science Inquiry. You choose one theme from each Perspective and take 2-3 courses within each theme. A theme is a set of courses taught by faculty from at least two disciplines, connected in a systematic and deliberate way and addressing the same topic from multiple disciplinary perspectives. In each of your chosen themes, you must take courses from at least two different disciplines (except in select themes in the Science Inquiry Perspective that are comprised entirely of courses from one discipline.)

Fine Arts, Historical Studies, and Literary Studies Designations

• You are required to complete three hours each of fine arts (FA), historical studies (HS), and literary studies (LS) courses within your chosen Perspectives themes.
  

General Education coursework in the major

• In addition to your 44 s.h. of courses in the General Education Program, you will take two courses in your major that also address the General Education goals:
  • Junior Writing in the Discipline (WID) - designed to give students instruction on the forms and conventions of written discourse in their major field.
    
  • Senior Capstone Experience (CAP) - The capstone experience represents the culmination of the university educational experience by linking the content and methods of the major with the goals of general.