305 Coates Building
Campus Box 3504
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3504
phone: (919) 843-7773
fax: (919) 843-6557

2006 Curriculum: Description

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill strives to cultivate the skills, knowledge, values, and habits that will allow graduates to lead personally enriching and socially responsible lives as effective citizens of rapidly changing, richly diverse, and increasingly interconnected local, national, and worldwide communities. The undergraduate experience aims to foster in Carolina graduates the curiosity, initiative, integrity, and adaptability requisite for success in the complex environment of the twenty-first century.

To these ends our curriculum seeks to provide for all students: (1) the fundamental skills that will facilitate future learning; (2) broad experience with the methods and results of the most widely employed approaches to knowledge; (3) a sense of how one might integrate these approaches to knowledge in a way that can cross traditional disciplinary and spatial boundaries; and (4) a thorough grounding in one particular subject. The undergraduate major is dedicated to the fourth of these curricular goals; the General Education curriculum, organized around the theme of “Making Connections,” addresses the other three goals simultaneously.

The General Education requirements that apply to all UNC undergraduates can be outlined as follows:

In addition, students pursuing the bachelor of arts degree need to satisfy Supplemental General Education requirements, described in detail later in this document.  

 

Foundations (17 hours)

General Education is premised upon the ability to communicate effectively both in English and another language and to apply quantitative reasoning skills in context.  The Foundations section of the curriculum therefore includes English composition and rhetoric, foreign language, and quantitative reasoning.  It also includes a Lifetime Fitness course that encourages the life-long health of graduates.

English Composition and Rhetoric (6 hrs)
All first-year students must successfully complete a two-course sequence of Composition and Rhetoric courses (ENGL 101 and 102), except as noted below.  Goals include mastering the technical aspects of writing and speaking, incorporating appropriate source material properly cited, learning to read and listen analytically, and to shape arguments according to purpose and audience.  In addition, students in ENGL 102 write papers and give oral presentations of greater length and complexity.  They also participate in sustained collaborative projects. 

  1. Students whose test scores on the SAT Verbal and Subject: Writing tests, or on an English department-administered Written and Oral Examination, indicate sufficient mastery of communication skills to warrant enrollment directly into ENGL 102 are required to take ENGL 102 only.
  2. Students whose test scores on the SAT Verbal and Subject: Writing tests, or on an English department-administered Written and Oral Examination, indicate mastery of the communication skills taught in both ENGL 101 and ENGL 102 are exempt from this requirement.
  3. Non-native English speakers are offered appropriate small-enrollment classes tailored to their particular needs before they begin the Composition and Rhetoric sequence.
  4. Students whose placement scores indicate a need for instruction and practice before beginning the Composition and Rhetoric sequence take ENGL 100 first.

Foreign Language (7 hrs)
All students must successfully complete level 3 of a foreign language, except as noted below. 

  1. Students who place into level 4 must successfully complete level 4
  2. Students who place beyond level 4 are exempt from this requirement
  3. Students who place into level 1 of the language studied in high school (and who continue study in that language) must successfully complete level 3, but will not receive credit toward graduation for level 1
  4. Successful completion of ENGL 101 and 102 constitutes satisfaction of this requirement for non-native speakers of English.

Quantitative Reasoning (3 hrs)
All students must successfully complete a core mathematical sciences course that helps them to develop skills and understand concepts in mathematics, data analysis, computing, probability or modeling. Suitable courses include basic courses in calculus, statistics, and finite mathematics.  Students who receive Advanced Placement credit (AB or BC) for Math 231 or 232 are exempt from this requirement.

Lifetime Fitness (1 hr)
All students must successfully complete one Lifetime Fitness course.  This course will combine practice of a sport or physical activity with broad instruction in life-long health. The course will carry one hour of graded academic credit that will count toward the required total for graduation and for the determination of full-time status in the semester in which the course is taken. Alone among the General Education requirements, this course may be taken on a Pass/D/Fail basis.  (No more than two Lifetime Fitness courses may be counted toward the 120 credit hours required for graduation.)

*Lists of courses that can satisfy the various Foundations requirements can be found in the Undergraduate Bulletin and the online Directory of classes.  The course search engine also provides access to all courses that satisfy General Education requirements.

 

Approaches (25 hours)

General Education must provide students a broad introduction to, and substantive experience working with, the distinctive methods and results of the most widely-employed approaches to knowledge.  Consequently, students must take courses from the following areas:

Physical and Life Sciences (7 hrs.)
All students must successfully complete two courses in the Physical and Life Sciences, at least one of which must include a laboratory component. 

Social and Behavioral Sciences (9 hrs.)
All students must successfully complete three courses in the social and behavioral sciences, subject to the following restrictions:

  1. At least one course must be in Historical Analysis.
  2. The three courses must be from at least two different departments or curricula.

 

Humanities and Fine Arts (9 hrs)

The Humanities and Fine Arts are divided into three categories.

  1. Philosophical and moral reasoning (3 hrs)
    All students must successfully complete one course in philosophical analysis that contains significant content in ethics or moral reasoning.
  2. Literary Analysis (3 hrs)
    All students must successfully complete one course in literary analysis; the course must principally involve analysis and evaluation of literary texts, or the creation of such texts. 
  3. Visual and performing arts (3 hrs)
    All students must successfully complete one course in art, music, drama, performance studies, or film.

*Lists of courses that can satisfy the various Approaches requirements can be found in the Undergraduate Bulletin and the online Directory of classes.  The course search engine also provides access to all courses that satisfy General Education requirements.

 

Connections (0 additional hours)

The Making Connections curriculum seeks to integrate foundational skills and disciplinary perspectives in ways that encourage linkages between discrete areas of knowledge, on the one hand, and between different geographic, social, conceptual and applied contexts, on the other hand.  Connections courses may be taken in one’s major or minor field, and they may double as Approaches courses or count as multiple Connections courses.  This principle of “multiple counting” encourages the disciplinary cross-fertilization, and the purposeful enhancement of students’ “in depth” areas of study, that the Making Connections curriculum was designed to achieve.  In pursuit of these overlapping objectives, students will satisfy course requirements in the following areas: 

Foundational Connections

  1. All students must successfully complete one Communication Intensive course, preferably in a major or minor area of concentration.  Communication Intensive courses must integrate writing and speaking into the subject matter in evident and important ways.
  2. All students must successfully complete a Quantitative Intensive course, preferably in a major or minor area of concentration.  The purpose of the requirement is to acquaint students with the ways in which quantitative reasoning and methods are applied in a specific field.  Students may satisfy the requirement, however, by taking a second Quantitative Reasoning course.  A substantial component (roughly half) of any Quantitative Intensive course will involve some of the following:  using quantitative methods to model and solve problems, using numerical reasoning; collecting and interpreting quantitative data, mathematical analysis, formal logic and proofs, etc.

Spatial and Cultural Connections

  1. Experiential Education: All students must successfully complete one course or program of study for academic credit in one of the following five categories, each of which invites the development and application of academic knowledge, skills, and expertise within the context of real-life situations and experiences:
    • Service Learning
    • Fieldwork
    • Sustained and mentored research
    • Internship
    • Study Abroad 
    • Direct and sustained engagement in a creative process the results of which are shared with an audience, such as the planning of an art exhibit, a dramatic or musical performance, or the wide circulation (or publication) of one’s poetry or prose. 
      •  
  2. U.S. Diversity:
    All students must successfully complete a course that systematically explores the perspectives/experiences of at least two US groups or subcultures (or important groups within these larger communities). Such groups might include African-Americans, Asian-Americans, European-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, or distinct subcultures within these broad categories.  Courses that address in systematic fashion other aspects of diversity such as age, class, gender, sexuality, region, or religion may also satisfy the US Diversity requirement. 
     
  3. The North Atlantic World:
    All students must successfully complete one course that addresses the history, geography, culture, or society of the world that they themselves inhabit, broadly defined as the North Atlantic (i. e., North America, including Native American cultures, and/or Western Europe.)
     
  4. Beyond the North Atlantic:
    All students must successfully complete one course that addresses the history, geography, culture, or society of one or more regions geographically distant from the United States, including Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Pacific.
     
  5. The World Before 1750:
    All students must successfully complete one course that familiarizes them with the distant origins of the world in which they live, since pre-modern periods and places (i. e., the world before 1750) influenced the shape of contemporary civilizations in ways both subtle and profound.
     
  6. Global Issues:
    All students must successfully complete a course that provides knowledge and understanding of transnational and transregional forces—economic, cultural, political, demographic, military, biological, etc.—that have shaped and continue to shape the global experience. 

*Lists of courses that can satisfy the various Connections requirements can be found in the Undergraduate Bulletin and the online Directory of classes.  The course search engine also provides access to all courses that satisfy General Education requirements.

 

Supplemental General Education (9 hours)

All students who seek A.B. degrees within the College of Arts and Sciences must take an additional nine hours of general education coursework. This requirement can be fulfilled in one of two ways:

  1. THE DISTRIBUTIVE OPTION: CROSSING DIVISIONS
    The College of Arts and Sciences has four Divisions: Basic and Applied Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Humanities, and Fine Arts. In this option, the student must successfully complete three non-introductory courses (that is, courses numbered above 200), including one from each of the three Divisions of the College of Arts and Sciences outside the student’s primary major.  The selection of courses is subject to the following restrictions:
    • No two courses may be in the same department or curriculum.
    • Courses taken to fulfill the Distributive Option may not come from the student’s primary major field.  Distributive courses may, however, fulfill requirements for a second major or a minor, provided the second major or minor belongs to a department or curriculum within a Division other than that of the primary major.
    • Courses taken to fulfill this requirement may not be used to fulfill the Foundations or Approaches requirements.  They may, however, be counted multiply to fulfill Connections requirements.
       
  2. THE INTEGRATIVE OPTION: INTERDISCIPLINARY CLUSTERS
    “Making Connections” is the central theme in the new curriculum, and the second option for fulfilling the supplemental general education requirements encourages students to make connections as they cross disciplinary boundaries to explore issues or solve problems.  In this option, students enroll in a formally constituted Cluster program (to be listed in the Undergraduate Bulletin).  Each of these interdisciplinary clusters will require students to take nine hours (usually in three courses) that are thematically and programmatically linked.  Students will choose three courses from a roster of at least six courses approved for the Cluster, but the selection of courses will be subject to the following restrictions:
    • The courses must be taught by at least two faculty members from at least two different Divisions or Schools. If they include faculty whose primary appointment is in another School at UNC-CH, at least one of the faculty participants must have their primary appointment in the College of Arts and Sciences.
    • The courses must be non-introductory (i. e., numbered above 200.)
    • Only three credits from the Cluster may count toward a student’s primary major, secondary major, or minor.
    • Courses taken to fulfill this requirement may not be used to fulfill the Foundations or Approaches requirements.  They may, however, be multiply counted to fulfill Connections requirements.
    • Among the three courses chosen to fulfill the cluster requirement, at least two Divisions of the college (or one Division plus one professional School) must be represented.