HSU General Education and All-University Requirements (GEAR) Program Learning Outcomes

The goal of the GEAR Program is to provide broad opportunities for development of foundational skills, disciplinary knowledge, and diverse perspectives that are critical to success of students through their educational journey at Humboldt State University and as lifelong learners.

The GEAR program learning outcomes are organized into three categories. Upon completion of the GEAR program, students will be able to:

Foundational Skills
  1. Demonstrate emergent skills and dispositions necessary for lifelong learning and self-development.
  2. Locate, evaluate, and employ information effectively and ethically for a wide range of purposes.
  3. Critically evaluate issues, ideas, artifacts, and evidence.
  4. Develop and express ideas effectively in writing.
  5. Effectively communicate orally for informational, persuasive, and expressive purposes.
  6. Demonstrate knowledge of broad college-level quantitative concepts and apply mathematical or statistical methods to describe, analyze, and solve problems in context.
Disciplinary Knowledge
  1. Apply scientific methods and models to draw quantitative and qualitative conclusions about the physical and natural world.
  2. Transform materials, ideas, or solutions into new forms through creative expression, innovative thinking and making, risk taking, or problem solving.
  3. Analyze literary, philosophical, historical, or artistic works and explain their cultural and/or historical significance and context.
  4. Analyze concepts, research methods, and theories pertaining to one or more of disciplines of the social sciences.
Broad Perspectives
  1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of the history of the US, and its structures of constitutional government, as a foundation for civic participation at all levels.
  2. Apply knowledge produced by voices and perspectives of marginalized communities to analyze systems of power and privilege and identify strategies for creating just and equitable societies.
  3. Describe how the resilience, sustainability, and conservation of ecological systems is a foundation of the functions of the natural world and/or economies.
  4. Articulate how a resilient future interfaces with the development of just and equitable societies, economies, environmental protection, and/or resource management at the local, national, and/or global levels.

Curriculum