Distribution Requirements: Learning Outcomes

Allegheny’s new Distribution Requirement takes effect in Fall 2016. Students matriculating in Fall 2016 and afterwards must complete coursework in eight areas of inquiry to satisfy the Distribution Requirement. The eight categories and their Learning Outcomes are as follows:

  1. CL: Civic Learning (CL). Civic Learning develops the political, ethical, and social capacities citizens need to address the challenges facing local, regional, national, and international communities through community engagement and/or through the cultivation of civic knowledge, skills, motivations, and behaviors.
    • Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of economic, political, legal, cultural, natural, historical, or social forces that affect public problems or civic issues.
  2. HE: Human Experience (HE). The study of Human Experience explores human physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual experiences as conveyed in texts broadly defined. Through engagement with such texts, students develop an appreciation for human experiences and their representations.
    • Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of how to interpret human experiences as conveyed in texts (including works of visual and performance art, rituals, cultural artifacts and traditions, and/or the written and spoken word).
  3. IP: International & Intercultural Perspectives (IP). An understanding of International & Intercultural Perspectives means awareness that culture provides the interpretive lens for action in the world, and that one’s particular culture is itself one of many cultures of the world. It includes the ability to recognize and understand the results of cultural difference wherever they are found, as well as an awareness of the norms of one’s own culture or those of other cultures.
    • Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of cultural complexity and difference.
  4. ME: Modes of Expression (ME). The study of Modes of Expression explores individual and/or collective modes of expression, focusing upon the ways in which these modes create meaning and communicate thoughts, emotions, or beliefs to others. By engaging in hands-on experience, students interrogate the act of communication itself.
    • Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of the production of meaning through active engagement with language, visual arts, and/or performance.
  5. PD: Power, Privilege, & Difference (PD). Understanding Power, Privilege, & Difference means understanding the role of power, privilege, prejudice, discrimination, stereotypes, inequity, and oppression in human society, in both historical and contemporary contexts, and recognizing these dynamics in the learner’s own life and communities.
    • Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of the historical and/or contemporary roles of power, privilege, and difference in human society.
  6. Quantitative Reasoning (QR). Quantitative Reasoning is the ability to understand, investigate, communicate, and contextualize numerical, symbolic, and graphical information towards the exploration of natural, physical, behavioral, or social phenomena.
    • Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of how to interpret numeric data and/or their graphical or symbolic representations.
  7. SB: Social Behavior & Institutions. The study of Social Behavior & Institutions encompasses a broad range of disciplines that use a variety of methodologies to describe, explain, or predict human behavior, social processes, and institutional structures as they interact with their environments.
    • Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of at least one methodology used to describe, explain, or predict human behavior at the level of the individual, small group, institution, organization, community, or population.
  8. SP: Scientific Process & Knowledge (SP). Courses involving Scientific Process & Knowledge aim to convey an understanding of what is known or can be known about the natural world; apply scientific reasoning towards the analysis and synthesis of scientific information; and create scientifically literate citizens who can engage productively in problem solving.
    • Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of the nature, approaches, and domain of scientific inquiry.