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University of Puget Sound

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University of Puget Sound  (Tacoma, WA)

Defining Statement:

“At the University of Puget Sound, education is an invitation to express yourself.”

Organizational Principles:

“The faculty of the University of Puget Sound have designed the core curriculum to give undergraduates an integrated and demanding introduction to the life of the mind and to established methods of intellectual inquiry.  The Puget Sound undergraduate’s core experience begins with two first-year seminars that guide the student through an in-depth exploration of a focused area of interest and that sharpen the student’s skills in constructing persuasive arguments.  In the first three years of their Puget Sound college career, students also study five “Approaches to Knowing”—Fine Arts, Humanities, Mathematics, Natural Science, and Social Science.  These core areas develop the student’s understanding of different disciplinary perspectives on society, culture, and the physical world, and explore both the strengths of those disciplinary approaches and their limitations.  Connections, an upper-level integrative course, challenges the traditional boundaries of disciplines and examines the benefits and limits of interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge.

Further, in accordance with the stated educational goals of the University of Puget Sound, core curriculum requirements have been established:  (a) to improve each student’s grasp of the intellectual tools necessary for the understanding and communication of ideas; (b) to enable each student to understand herself or himself as a thinking person capable of making ethical and aesthetic choices; (c) to help each student to comprehend the diversity of intellectual approaches to understanding human society and the physical world; and (d) to increase each student’s awareness of his or her place in those broader contexts.  Students choose from a set of courses in eight Core areas, developing over four years an understanding of the liberal arts as the foundation for a lifetime of learning.”

Curricular Requirements:

University Core Requirements			Units
	The First Year: Argument and Inquiry (two seminar cannot count toward major or minor)
		Scholarly and Creative Inquiry Seminar	1
		Writing and Rhetoric Seminar	1
	Years 1 through 3: Five Approaches to Knowing
		Fine Arts Humanistic Mathematical Natural Scientific Social Scientific	1 1 1 1 1
	Junior or Senior Year: Interdisciplinary Experience		1
		Connections	1

Foreign Language courses/or place-out test also required.

Graduation Requirements Total Units Upper Division (outside primary major)	32 3
Upper Division Percentage (outside primary major)	9.375%
Core requirements	8
Core Percentage	25%

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General Education

Pacific Lutheran University

Tacoma, WA 98447
Ph: 253-535-7490   Email: gened@plu.edu   Edit