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Graduation Requirements

Hiram College students are candidates for the Bachelor of Arts degree. The degree requires completion of 120 or more semester hours of work in which the student must have attained a grade-point average of at least 2.00. In addition, students must attain a cumulative grade-point average of 2.00 in their major field of study. We consider each student to be responsible for fulfilling the current graduation requirements. Faculty advisors provide assistance in explaining the graduation requirements listed below.

All first time college students entering Hiram College in the fall of 2006 and after are required to complete:

Core Curriculum and Requirements

• The New Student Institute & First-Year Colloquium: The colloquium is a four semester hour introduction to college writing and discourse, taught by faculty across disciplines. First Year Colloquiums
• The First-Year Seminar: A four semester hour course which refines writing and speaking skills while also providing an introductory educational experience through the examination of the ideas of important contributors to our understanding on a particular topic. This is to be completed in the first year. First Year Seminars
• To gain breadth in the liberal arts, students are required to select courses from the broad spectrum of the curriculum by taking one course from each of the categories outlined below. Courses used to fulfill distribution must encompass at least six different academic disciplines. Interdisciplinary courses used to fulfill a distribution requirement cannot double count toward the interdisciplinary requirement. Although a course may be approved as satisfying either of two categories, it cannot double-count for a single student.

Ways of Knowing: Hiram College is committed to a rigorous, creative, and demanding intellectual environment that focuses on methods for acquiring knowledge and understanding about human beings and the world. One course or experience that satisfies each of the relevant sets of goals is required.

• Creative Methods (CM): The expression of human creativity involves the development of practical and evaluative skills. Courses and experiences satisfy this requirement by helping students understand the creative process and teaching them the intellectual skills necessary for reflection and evaluation of artistic products.
  • Goal: Acquire the vocabulary necessary to talk intelligently about one’s own creative art as well as the creative art of others, and to clearly articulate the aesthetic experience.
  • Goal: Develop hands-on skills necessary for aesthetic expression and reflection and practical knowledge essential to the implementation of creative techniques and concepts.

• Interpretive Methods (IM): The human experience of meaning involves the application of interpretation to a broad variety of human endeavors, including art, music, literature, and philosophical and religious texts. Courses and experiences satisfy the goals for this requirement by teaching the skills necessary to interpret one or more forms of human expression.
  • Goal: Interpret the human experience of meaning as expressed in artistic and intellectual products.
  • Goal: Apply the knowledge and perspective gained from interpretive analysis to a broader understanding of the world or to one’s own life.

• Modeling Methods (MM): Modeling involves the construction of abstractions that capture and simplify physical, social, biological, and other complex phenomena. The models are then analyzed using deduction and logic, statistics, and/or mathematics in order to better understand and interpret the original. Courses and experiences satisfy the goals for this requirement by teaching modeling and methods for analyzing models.
  • Goal: Understand the role of models in explaining the world and universe, including techniques for testing the accuracy and limitations of models.
  • Goal: Use this understanding to solve problems: learn to apply mathematical models to understand a variety of real world situations.

• Experimental Scientific Methods (SM): The application of reason to the natural world requires the use of the hypothetical-experimental method. Courses and experiences satisfy the goals for this requirement by teaching, in a hands-on laboratory environment, the empirical method in practical data-gathering learning experiences, and reflection on the nature and limits of this methodology.
  • Goal: Develop hands-on skill acquiring reproducible data and interpreting them within a theoretical framework.
  • Goal: Understand the application and limitation of experimental data and theoretical frameworks to the natural world.

• Social and Cultural Analysis Methods (CA): Human behavior is organized by complex systems which differ widely across societies and over time. Human knowledge cannot be understood without considering historical, social, and cultural contexts. Courses and experiences satisfy this goal by teaching students the conceptual and analytic tools necessary to make sense of these essential dimensions of our existence.
  • Goal: Examine social life by analyzing the roles of history, culture, power structures, norms, or customs in its organization.
  • Goal: Acquire the analytical skills and critical sensibilities to understand how knowledge shapes human social behavior and creates historical change.

Ways of Developing Responsible Citizenship: Hiram College is committed to the goal of developing socially responsible, ethical citizens. One course or experience that satisfies each of the relevant sets of goals is required for each student.

• Experiencing the World (EW): Hiram students must prepare to live as citizens of the world. Courses and experiences help students to do this by helping them develop capacities for understanding international issues, other peoples and other cultures, and the nature of responsible, engaged global citizenship.
  • Goal: Demonstrate an informed understanding of the values and attitudes of people in another culture, and the ways in which these influence the contemporary world.
  • Goal: Evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit criteria, one’s own culture and other cultures.

• Understanding Diversity at Home (UD): The United States is richly diverse. Encountering and learning the necessary skills for interaction with this diversity is essential to a liberal arts education at Hiram College. Courses and experiences satisfy these goals by introducing students to the diversity of our own country and equipping them with the intellectual skills necessary for conversing in this complex environment.
  • Goal: Demonstrate an understanding of the diversity of U.S. society and the ways in which different groups have experienced and confronted issues of diversity.
  • Goal: Demonstrate as well an informed awareness and understanding of U.S. commonality – those principles and values that are most central to the experience of the United States.
  • Goal: Address matters of diversity in a variety of contexts, including ethical, social, and personal.

• Meaning, Ethics, and Social Responsibility (ES): The ability to formulate and evaluate claims about meaning and value is essential to the tasks of forming identity and being responsible citizens. Courses and experiences satisfy this goal by teaching both conceptual tools and practical skills that permit students to reflectively evaluate their own lives and interact responsibly in the lives of others.
  • Goal: Understand the ways in which claims about values are discovered, articulated, and justified.
  • Goal: Apply this understanding, in conjunction with practical skills, to reflective evaluation about one’s own beliefs and those of others and/or engagement with contemporary social, political, and ethical problems.

Interdisciplinary requirement: Completion of one of the following:

• Two Interdisciplinary Courses, one of which must be team taught; 
• A Collegium;
• An Interdisciplinary Minor or Interdisciplinary Major. A list of majors and minors that fulfill this requirement is available from the Registrar and/or the Associate Dean of the College.
• Interdisciplinary courses and Collegium courses
  

Courses taken to complete this requirement may be counted toward completion of the Distribution Requirements.

• Independent Capstone Experienc e : Students will complete a directed experience (minimum of 1 credit hour) in the form of a specific course, independent research study, or internship project, done late in a student’s program (preferably after 90 or more credits). A formal departmental, campus-wide, or public (at Hiram or elsewhere) demonstration must be a part of this experience.

Major Area of Study

Students may choose a departmental major, or propose an individualized major involving more than one department. For the departmental major the student must have a faculty advisor in the department or program. The individualized major must be sponsored by faculty member(s) and approved by the Academic Program Committee. Guidelines are available from the Associate Academic Dean. Each major will include an upper level Capstone requirement.

Senior Residency Requirements

Leave of Absence Policy

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