New Student Graduation Requirements

Graduation Requirements for New Students Fall 2020

• I. First Year Program
  1. First-Year Enduring Questions – a 4 credit hour course which serves as an introduction to writing and critical thinking in a liberal arts context, to be taken during the Fall 12-week term, 2020.
  2. First-Year Urgent Questions – a more advanced 4 credit hour course with a focus on writing, critical thinking and research, to be taken during the Spring 12-week term, 2021.
• II. Ways of Knowing

  In satisfying these eight requirements, please be aware that at least six different disciplines must be represented in your choices. This will help ensure the breadth of your general education experience at Hiram. If some classes are designated as meeting two general education requirements, a student may count it towards both.

  1. Creative Methods (CM): The expression of human creativity involves the development of practical and evaluative skills. Courses satisfy this requirement by helping students to understand the creative process and by teaching them the intellectual skills necessary for reflection and evaluation of artistic products.
     1. Goals:
        1. 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.
        2. Develop hands-on skills that are necessary for aesthetic expression and reflection and practical knowledge essential to the implementation of creative techniques and concepts.
  2. 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 satisfy the goals for this requirement by teaching the skills necessary to interpret one or more forms of human expression.
     1. Goals:
        1. Interpret the human experience of meaning as expressed in artistic and intellectual products.
        2. Apply the knowledge and perspective gained from interpretive analysis to a broader understanding of the world or to one’s own life.
  3. 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 satisfy the goals for this requirement by teaching modeling and methods for analyzing models.
     1. Goals:
        1. Understand the role of models in explaining the world and universe, including techniques for testing the accuracy and limitations of models.
        2. Use this understanding to solve problems: learn to apply models to understand a variety of real world situations.
  4. Experimental Scientific Methods (SM): The application of reason to the natural world requires the use of the hypothetical-experimental method. Courses 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.
     1. Goals:
        1. Develop hands-on skills acquiring reproducible data and interpreting them within a theoretical framework.
        2. Understand the application and limitation of experimental data and theoretical frameworks to the natural world.
  5. 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 satisfy this goal by teaching students the conceptual and analytic tools necessary to make sense of these essential dimensions of our existence.
     1. Goals:
        1. Examine social life by analyzing the roles of history, culture, power structures, norms or customs in its organization.
        2. Acquire the analytical skills and critical sensibilities to understand human society and culture.
  6. Experiencing the World (EW): Hiram students must prepare to live as citizens of the world. Courses 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.
     1. Goals:
        1. Demonstrate an informed understanding of the values and attitudes of people in another culture and the ways in which these influence the contemporary world.
        2. Evaluate, critically, and on the basis of explicit criteria, the culture of a foreign society.
  7. 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 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.
     1. Goals:
        1. Demonstrate an understanding of the diversity of U.S. society and the ways in which different groups have experienced and confronted issues of diversity.
        2. 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.
        3. Address matters of diversity in a variety of contexts, including ethical, social and personal.
  8. 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 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.
     1. Goals:
        1. Understand the ways in which claims about values are discovered, articulated and justified.
        2. 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.
• III. Interdisciplinary Requirement

  The complex, expansive problems of our times require imaginative and critically reflective approaches.  Because knowledge is interconnected and rooted in life itself, we must attend to the skills and habits of mind that foster this recognition and enable our students to confront these urgent problems in their complexity.  While disciplines address questions specific to their fields of study, some questions lie outside the purview of a single area, and require the integration of knowledge and methods from two or more disciplines. Thus, we feel it is critically important for students to experience the dialogue that emerges as two scholarly disciplines engage with these important questions.

  1. Goals:
     1. Demonstrate an understanding of a complex issue and identify two or more disciplinary perspectives on it
     2. Formulate a response to an issue that extends beyond a disciplinary approach and that enlarges a disciplinary perspective
  2. This requirement can be completed in one of the following ways:
     1. Two interdisciplinary courses: One of these INTD courses must be team-taught.
     2. Interdisciplinary minor or major: Completing a designated interdisciplinary minor or major. Check with the Registrar for a complete list.