The elements of Allegheny’s curriculum work together to provide students with a cohesive program in which all four Institutional Learning Outcomes may be achieved. In particular, the SWS program, Junior Seminar, and Senior Project progressively develop students’ abilities to read and listen critically, formulate their ideas, and become more effective writers and speakers. The Distribution Requirements introduce students to a variety of ways of organizing and making sense of information, and they develop students’ recognition of complexity and difference.
- PLO1: To demonstrate, as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners, an awareness of audience, purpose, occasion, and genre conventions and their effects on the creation and delivery of ideas.
- PLO2: To use the ideas of others to advance thinking.
- PLO3: To use iterative composing processes to discover and reconsider ideas and their expression.
- PLO4: To engage in reading, writing, speaking, and listening as acts of critical thinking
- 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.
Civic Identities Explores diverse cultures, values, and perspectives and their effect on the civic agency of individuals and groups.
Civic Systems Examines the systemic forces that shape civic life including institutions, rules, procedures, norms, conventions, attitudes, and behaviors, among others.
Civic Ethics Confronts the multiple ethical dimensions of complex public problems and of taking action on them.
Civic Actions Addresses public challenges with an understanding of the possibilities and limits of individual and collective action.
- 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.
- 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).
Context Considers how personal or external contexts inform human experiences
Analysis Interprets the ways in which textual features are used to convey human experiences
Engagement Reflects on, creates, or recreates aspects of textually-connected human experiences
Response Evaluates how forms, features and structures of texts influence response to texts
- 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).
- 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.
Concepts of Culture Wrestles with the challenge of conceptualizing culture
Cultural Complexity Identifies facts, theories, or concepts about culture(s) distinct from one’s own
Cultural Difference Engages with differences between cultures
Methodology Employs an appropriate scholarly method to analyze culture
- Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of cultural complexity and difference.
- 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.
Tools & techniques Uses the mode of expression’s terminology, principles, or tools
Process Applies established processes leading to expressive communication
Context & audience Considers external physical, intellectual, or cultural circumstances
Conventions Creates with consideration of conventions or previous expressive acts
- 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.
- 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.
Systems of Power Investigates structural power imbalances and systems of oppression
Systems of Privilege Investigates unearned or unacknowledged advantages or immunities accorded to particular individuals or groups Systems of Difference Analyzes the social and cultural construction of difference
Values & Assumptions Questions ideas and ideologies that sustain systems of inequity
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Approaches Examines methodologies or theories used to understand human behavior
Applications Applies key methods, frameworks, or processes to gain insight into diverse human behaviors
Interactions Examines the interplay between human behavior and social structures
Ethics Considers ethical principles as they relate to the study of human behavior or institutional structures
- 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.
- 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.
Nature of Scientific Inquiry Identifies a scientific question, argument, or problem to be explored
Approaches to Scientific Inquiry Uses relevant and appropriate processes or methods of scientific inquiry
Evidence-based Reasoning Constructs logical arguments based on existing or novel empirical information
Scientific Communication Interprets scholarly scientific information and generates written or oral work conveying scientific implications or conclusions
- Learning Outcome: Students who successfully complete this requirement will demonstrate an understanding of the nature, approaches, and domain of scientific inquiry.