California State University
General Education - Breadth Requirements Criteria

From Office of the Chancellor
California State University
Executive Order No. 595

1. A minimum of nine semester units or twelve quarter units in communication in the English language, to include both oral communication and written communication, and in critical thinking, to include consideration of common fallacies in reasoning.
   
   Instruction approved for fulfillment of the requirement in communication is to be designed to emphasize the content of communication as well as the form and should provide an understanding of the psychological basis and the social significance of communication, including how communication operates in various situations. Applicable course(s) should view communication as the process of human symbolic interaction focusing on the communicative process from the rhetorical perspective: reasoning and advocacy, organization, accuracy; the discovery, critical evaluation and reporting of information; reading and listening effectively as well as speaking and writing. This must include active participation and practice in written communication and oral communication.
   
   Instruction in critical thinking is to be designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, which should lead to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief. The minimal competence to be expected at the successful conclusion of instruction in critical thinking should be the demonstration of skills in elementary inductive and deductive processes, including an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought, and the ability to distinguish matters of fact from issues of judgment or opinion.
   
   
2. A minimum of twelve semester units or eighteen quarter units to include inquiry into the physical universe and its life forms, with some immediate participation in laboratory activity, and into mathematical concepts and quantitative reasoning and their applications.
   
   Instruction approved for the fulfillment of this requirement is intended to impart knowledge of the facts and principles which form the foundations of living and non-living systems. Such studies should promote understanding and appreciation of the methodologies of science as investigative tools, the limitations of scientific endeavors: namely, what is the evidence and how was it derived? In addition, particular attention should be given to the influence which the acquisition of scientific knowledge has had on the development of the world's civilizations, not only as expressed in the past but also in present times. The nature and extent of laboratory experience is to be determined by each campus through its established curricular procedures. In specifying inquiry into mathematical concepts and quantitative reasoning and their application, the intention is not to imply merely basic computational skills, but to encourage as well the understanding of basic mathematical concepts.
3. A minimum of twelve semester units or eighteen quarter units among the arts, literature, philosophy and foreign languages.
   
   Instruction approved for the fulfillment of this requirement should cultivate intellect, imagination, sensibility and sensitivity. It is meant in part to encourage students to respond subjectively as well as objectively to experience and to develop a sense of the integrity of emotional and intellectual response. Students should be motivated to cultivate and refine their affective as well as cognitive and physical faculties through studying great works of the human imagination, which could include active participation individual esthetic, creative experience. Equally important is the intellectual examination of the subjective response, thereby increasing awareness and appreciation in the traditional humanistic disciplines such as art, dance, drama, literature and music. The requirement should result in the student's better understanding of the interrelationship between the creative arts, the humanities and self. Studies in these areas should include exposure to both Western cultures and non-Western cultures.
   
   Foreign language courses may be included in this requirement because of their implications for cultures both in their linguistic structures and in their use in literature; but foreign language courses which are approved to meet a portion of this requirement are to contain a cultural component and not be solely skills acquisition courses. Campus provisions for fulfillment of this requirement must include a reasonable distribution among the categories specified as opposed to the completion of the entire number of units required in one category.
4. A minimum of twelve semester units or eighteen quarter units dealing with human social, political, and economic institutions and behavior and their historical background.
   
   Instruction approved for fulfillment of this requirement should reflect the fact that human social, political and economic institutions and behavior are inextricably interwoven. Problems and issues in these areas should be examined in their contemporary as well as historical setting, including both Western and non Western contexts. Campus provisions for fulfillment of this requirement must include a reasonable distribution among the categories specified as opposed to completion of the entire number of units required in one category.
5. A minimum of three semester units or four quarter units in study designed to equip human beings for lifelong understanding and development of themselves as integrated physiological and psychological entities.
   
   Instruction approved for fulfillment of this requirement should facilitate understanding of the human being as an integrated physiological, social, and psychological organism. Courses developed to meet this requirement are intended to include selective consideration of such matters as human behavior, sexuality, nutrition, health, stress, key relationships of humankind to the social and physical environment, and implications of death and dying. Physical activity could be included, provided that it is an integral part of the study described herein.