Cal Poly Humboldt Learning Outcomes
To learn about the seven outcomes achieved by graduating Humboldt bachelor’s students, visit the Cal Poly Humboldt Undergraduate Institutional Learning Outcomes webpage.
To learn about the seven outcomes achieved by graduating Humboldt master’s students, visit the Cal Poly Humboldt Graduate School Institutional Learning Outcomes webpage.
To find a list of all degree programs and their learning outcomes, visit either Program Learning Outcomes - Bachelor's Degrees or Program Learning Outcomes - Master's Degrees.
To learn about the fourteen outcomes targeted by the General Education and All-University Requirements (GEAR) program, visit the GEAR Program Learning Outcomes webpage. To learn more about the skills and ways of knowing presented in each GEAR area, explore the content collapsed under each heading below.
Area A: English Language Communication and Critical Thinking
Area A: English Language Communication and Critical Thinking
Area A Written and Oral Communication courses develop knowledge and understanding of the form, content, context, and effectiveness of communication. Students in these courses will
- examine communication from the rhetorical perspective;
- practice reasoning, advocacy, organization, and accuracy; and
- enhance their skills and abilities in the discovery, critical evaluation, and reporting of information.
Area A Critical Thinking courses develop abilities to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas; to reason inductively and deductively; and to reach well-supported factual or judgmental conclusions. Students in these courses will study
- logic and its relation to language;
- elementary inductive and deductive processes, including the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought; and
- how to distinguish matters of fact from issues of judgment or opinion.
Area B: Scientific Inquiry and Quantitative Reasoning
Area B: Scientific Inquiry and Quantitative Reasoning
Area B Life Forms and Physical Universe courses develop knowledge of scientific theories, concepts, and data about both living and nonliving systems. Students will work to understand and appreciate scientific principles and the scientific method, the potential limits of scientific endeavors, and the value systems and ethics associated with human inquiry.
Thus, these lower-division and upper-division Area B courses should guide students toward the following skills:
- apply scientific concepts and theories to develop scientific explanations of natural phenomena;
- critically evaluate conclusions drawn from a particular set of observations or experiments; and
- demonstrate their understanding of the science field under study through proper use of the technical/scientific language, and the development, interpretation, and application of concepts.
Area B Mathematics/Quantitative Reasoning courses develop abilities to reason quantitatively, practice computational skills, and explain and apply mathematical or quantitative reasoning concepts to solve problems.
Thus, Area B Math/QR courses should guide students toward being able to:
- reason quantitatively,
- practice computational skills, and
- explain and apply mathematical or quantitative reasoning concepts to solve problems.
Area C: Arts and Humanities
Area C: Arts and Humanities
Area C courses cultivate intellect, imagination, sensibility, and sensitivity. Students will respond subjectively as well as objectively to aesthetic experiences and will develop an understanding of the integrity of both emotional and intellectual responses. Students will cultivate and refine their affective, cognitive, and physical faculties through studying works of the human imagination. In their intellectual and subjective considerations, students will broaden their knowledge of the humanities in a variety of cultures and enrich their understanding of the interrelationship between the self and the creative arts.
Thus, lower-division and upper-division Area C courses should guide students toward the following skills:
- apply discipline‐specific vocabulary and central discipline‐specific concepts and principles to a specific instance, literary work, or artistic creation;
- respond subjectively as well as objectively to aesthetic experiences and differentiate between emotional and intellectual responses;
- explain the nature and scope of the perspectives and contributions found in a particular discipline within the arts and humanities as related to the human experience, both individually (theirs) and collectively; and
- demonstrate an understanding of the intellectual, imaginative, and cultural elements involved in the creative arts through their participation in and study of drama, music, studio art, and/or creative writing.
Area D: Social Sciences
Area D: Social Sciences
Students learn from courses in Area D disciplines that human social, political, and economic institutions and behavior are inextricably interwoven. Students will develop an understanding of problems and issues from disciplinary perspectives, and they will examine issues in contemporary and historical settings and in a variety of cultural contexts. Students will explore the principles, methodologies, value systems, and ethics employed in social scientific inquiry.
Thus, lower-division and upper-division Area D courses should guide students toward the following skills:
- apply the discipline-specific vocabulary, principles, methodologies, value systems, and ethics employed in social science inquiry;
- explain and critically analyze human social, economic, and political issues from the respective disciplinary perspectives by examining them in contemporary as well as historical settings and in a variety of cultural contexts; and
- illustrate how human social, political, and economic institutions and behavior are inextricably interwoven.
Area E: Lifelong Learning and Self-Development
Area E: Lifelong Learning and Self-Development
Area E Lifelong Learning and Self-Development courses are designed to equip learners for lifelong understanding and development of themselves as integrated physiological, social, and psychological beings. Students will focus on skills, abilities, and dispositions.
Area F: Ethnic Studies
Area F: Ethnic Studies
Area F Ethnic Studies courses shall guide students toward at least three of the following five core competencies:
- Analyze and articulate concepts such as race and racism, racialization, ethnicity, equity, ethno-centrism, eurocentrism, white supremacy, self-determination, liberation, decolonization, sovereignty, imperialism, settler colonialism, and anti-racism as analyzed in any one or more of the following: Native American Studies, African American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Latina and Latino American Studies.
- Apply theory and knowledge produced by Native American, African American, Asian American, and/or Latina and Latino American communities to describe the critical events, histories, cultures, intellectual traditions, contributions, lived experiences and social struggles of those groups with a particular emphasis on agency and group-affirmation.
- Critically analyze the intersection of race and racism as they relate to class, gender, sexuality, religion, spirituality, national origin, immigration status, ability, tribal citizenship, sovereignty, language, and/or age in Native American, African American, Asian American, and/or Latina and Latino American communities.
- Critically review how struggle, resistance, racial and social justice, solidarity, and liberation, as experienced and enacted by Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and/or Latina and Latino Americans are relevant to current and structural issues such as communal, national, international, and transnational politics as, for example, in immigration, reparations, settler-colonialism, multiculturalism, language policies.
- Describe and actively engage with anti-racist and anti-colonial issues and the practices and movements in Native American, African American, Asian American and/or Latina and Latino communities and a just and equitable society.
American Institutions
American Institutions
Courses that address the historical development of American institutions and ideals must include all of the following subject matter elements:
- Significant events covering a minimum time span of approximately one hundred years and occurring in the entire area now included in the United States of America, including the relationships of regions within that area and with external regions and powers as appropriate to the understanding of those events within the United States during the period under study
- The role of major ethnic and social groups in such events and the contexts in which the events have occurred
- The events presented within a framework that illustrates the continuity of the American experience and its derivation from other cultures, including consideration of three or more of the following: politics, economics, social movements, and geography
Courses that address the Constitution of the United States, the operation of representative democratic government under that Constitution, and the process of California state and local government must address all of the following subject matter elements:
- The political philosophies of the framers of the Constitution and the nature and operation of United States political institutions and processes under that Constitution as amended and interpreted
- The rights and obligations of citizens in the political system established under the Constitution
- The Constitution of the state of California within the framework of evolution of federal-state relations and the nature and processes of state and local government under that Constitution
- Contemporary relationships of state and local government with the federal government, the resolution of conflicts and the establishment of cooperative processes under the constitutions of both the state and nation, and the political processes involved
Diversity and Common Ground
Diversity and Common Ground
Diversity and Common Ground (DCG) courses guide students toward the ability to analyze the complexity of diversity through the perspective of differential power and privilege, identity politics, and/or multicultural studies.
DCG courses are centrally organized around the aims of one of the four pedagogical models. Students can ask their instructors which model provides the structure for their class.
I. Multicultural Studies
The educational objectives of this model are for students to
- comprehend the diversity of knowledge, experiences, values, worldviews, traditions, and achievements represented by the cultures of the United States and/or beyond, and to understand some of the significant ways in which those cultures have interacted with one another;
- explore and evaluate concrete examples of the student's own cultural heritage in relation to others, and
- be able to read a culture critically through expressions and representations indigenous and exogenous to that culture.
II. Identity Politics
The educational objectives of this model are for students to
- study how various cultural groups have defined their visions of self and other, and of the relationships between self and other;
- evaluate the complexity and fluidity of social identities, particularly with respect to the intersections of class, ethnicity, disability, gender, nationality, and so on, and
- understand how cultural differences and identities founded in such categories as age, race, sexuality and so on are produced and perpetuated through a variety of social, cultural, and disciplinary discourses (e.g. literature, popular culture, science, law, etc.)
III. Differential Power and Privilege
The educational objectives of this model are for students to
- become aware of the causes and effects of structured inequalities and prejudicial exclusion rooted in race, class, gender, etc., and to elucidate broader questions of bias and discrimination as they relate to the exercise and distribution of material and cultural power and privilege;
- study culturally diverse perspectives on past and present injustice, and on processes leading to a more just and equitable society, and
- expand the ability to think critically about vital problems and controversies in social, scientific, economic, and cultural life stemming from differences of gender, race, disability, class, etc.
IV. Integrative Approach
The integrative approach model will substantively incorporate aims from two or more of the above models.
Curriculum Office Hours
Every Thursday, 3:00-5:00 PM, zoom.
