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General Education & Core Curriculum

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Every course and every program has identified learning outcomes. In addition, ACC has six general education competencies that reflect the skills, attitudes, and behaviors that characterize the educated person. These competencies are taught in many different courses across the Core Curriculum courses reflecting relationships across programs and between classes. As such, they help shape the experiences of nearly every student. The following are the six general education competencies:

Communication Skills: Develop, interpret, and express ideas and information through written, oral and visual communication that is adapted to purpose, structure, audience, and medium.

Critical Thinking Skills: Gather, analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and apply information for the purposes of innovation, inquiry, and creative thinking.

Empirical and Quantitative Skills: Apply mathematical, logical, and scientific principles and methods through the manipulation and analysis of numerical data or observable facts resulting in informed conclusions.

Personal Responsibility Skills: Identify and apply ethical principles and practices to decision-making by connecting choices, actions, and consequences.

Social Responsibility (Civic and Cultural Awareness): Analyze differences and commonalities among peoples, ideas, aesthetic traditions, and cultural practices to include intercultural competence, knowledge of civic responsibility, and the ability to engage effectively in regional, national, and global communities.

Teamwork: Consider different points of view to work collaboratively and effectively in pursuit of a shared purpose or goal.

Which of these competencies is taught in a given course depends on the component area of the Core Curriculum to which the course is assigned.

• • Communication (6 credit hours)
  • Mathematics (3 credit hours)
  • Life and Physical Sciences (6 credit hours)
  • Language, Philosophy, and Culture (3 credit hours)
  • Creative Arts (3 credit hours)
  • American History (6 credit hours)
  • Government/Political Science (6 credit hours)
  • Social and Behavioral Sciences (3 credit hours)
  • Component Area Option (6 credit hours)

The Component Area Option is usually satisfied by the student completing EDUC 1300, a SPCH course, and/or a second Language, Philosophy, and Culture course.

Note: Students pursuing an AAS degree in a workforce program need only complete 15 credit hours of general education courses, not the entire Core Curriculum. These must include at least one course in natural sciences/mathematics, social and behavioral science, and language, philosophy, and culture/creative arts.