General Education at Framingham State

Our Mission Statement

General Education complements your major's academic work by fostering curiosity and helping you develop a broad range of interests as you explore courses and concepts across disciplines. By thinking about current issues through diverse disciplinary lenses, you will have the opportunity to develop the intellectual versatility required for all twenty-first-century careers, as well as personal enrichment and self-awareness.

General Education at Framingham State is designed so that you, our students, can do the following:

• Build a breadth of knowledge across numerous academic disciplines
• Explore majors and minors
• Investigate current issues, especially equity and the ongoing antiracism movement, from
  different angles alongside your instructors and peers
• Develop skills for employability in a dynamic job market

The Program

During your career at FSU, you’ll complete 10 General Education courses across different areas of study, which we call “domains.”

• Core requirements in writing and math, both of which you’ll complete early in your academic career, help you develop foundational skills that you’ll need throughout your college education and beyond.
• The Study of Representations of Human Experience gives you the opportunity to explore how humans express themselves creatively through art and language, as well as how those expressions can be understood and interpreted.
• The Study of Problem Solving, Scientific Discover, Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Analysis helps you explore how we use numbers and other symbols to solve problems and how scientific knowledge is constructed and validated, as well as key principles of the life and physical sciences.
• The Study of Human Behavior, Cultures, and Societies gives you the opportunity to explore human behavior, culture, and expression in both the past and the present, as well as a chance to explore global matters, ethical reasoning, and human diversity.

There are three divisions under each of the domains (except the core), and you can find a complete list of the courses for each of these divisions, as well as more detail about the General Education requirements, in the course catalog.

Nearly all majors fulfill one of those “subdomains” by virtue of completion of your degree. The rest of your General Education courses will be taken in areas of study outside of your major to help you develop that “breadth of knowledge” and to let you explore majors, as we describe in our mission statement. 

Skills in General Education Courses

General Education courses round out your areas of study, but they also help you develop skills that support your personal and professional goals.

All General Education courses teach critical thinking skills, which are absolutely essential to solving current problems in our world. 

In addition, you’ll have the opportunity to strengthen your abilities in the following areas:

• Communicating effectively orally
• Communicating effectively in writing
• Solving problems using quantitative thinking
• Demonstrating a critical understanding of human diversity
• Demonstrating a critical understanding of civic literacy
• Recognizing ethical and social responsibilities
• Locating, evaluating, and applying information
• Solving problems using creative thinking
• Demonstrating technological competency
• Working collaboratively and independently