Wright State Core

Wright State Core Program Information

The Wright State Core is a 36-credit-hour general education program.  The core is an integrated program of courses and experiences that provides students with the breadth of skills, knowledge, and understanding expected of university graduates. The program helps students develop the knowledge and skills essential for critical thinking, creative problem solving, meaningful civic engagement, multicultural competence, appreciation for the arts, and life-long learning.

Wright State graduates will be able to demonstrate mastery of the following University Learning Outcomes (ULO):

• communicate effectively
• demonstrate mathematical literacy
• evaluate arguments and evidence critically
• apply the methods of inquiry of the natural sciences, social and behavioral sciences, and the arts and humanities
• demonstrate global and multicultural competence
• demonstrate an understanding of contemporary social and ethical issues
• participate in democratic society as informed and civically engaged citizens

The Wright State Core is divided into five Elements A-E. The Elements are the foundational skills, the broad areas of knowledge and practice, and the global, historical, and cultural perspectives that together provide Wright State University students with the ability to negotiate their roles successfully and constructively in a changing world. Even more than in the past, graduates must be proficient in all methods of communication, must be able to use and interpret mathematical and statistical information, and must understand the methods of inquiry of the historian, the scientist, and the humanist.

Elements and Learning Outcomes:

First-Year Seminar

As a result of their learning experience, students completing a First-Year Seminar can:

• Demonstrate self-awareness and acknowledge their impact on others.
• Identify strategies and resources for academic success.
• Recognize the rich diversity of a university community.
• Evaluate information, arguments, and evidence to make informed judgments and decisions.
• Identify skills, interests, purpose, and values to make informed career choices.
• Recognize and evaluate disciplinary perspectives.

Element A: English Composition

As a result of their learning experience, students completing an English Composition Core class can:

• Recognize and describe context, audience, purpose, and medium.
• Use appropriate, relevant, and compelling content to explore ideas within the context of a discipline and shape of the written work.
• Fulfill expectations appropriate to a specific discipline and/or writing task for basic organization, content, and presentation.
• Demonstrate consistent use of credible, relevant sources to support ideas that are situated within the discipline and genre of the writing.
• Use individual and collaborative processes within the writing task.

Element B: Mathematics, Statistics, and Logic

As a result of their learning experience, students completing a Mathematics, Statistics, or Logic Core class can:

• Identify the various elements of a mathematical or statistical model.
• Determine the values of specific components of a mathematical/statistical model or relationships among various components.
• Apply a mathematical/statistical model to a real-world problem.
• Interpret and draw conclusions from graphical, tabular, and other numerical or statistical representations of data.
• Summarize and justify analyses of mathematical/statistical models for problems, expressing solutions using an appropriate combination of words, symbols, tables, or graphs.

Element C: Arts and Humanities

As a result of their learning experience, students completing an Arts or Humanities Core class can:

• Employ principles, terminology, and methods from disciplines in the arts and humanities.
• Analyze, interpret, and/or evaluate primary works that are products of the human imagination and critical thought.
• Reflect on the creative process of products of the human imagination and critical thought.
• Explain relationships among cultural and/or historical contexts.
• Convey concepts and evidence related to humanistic endeavors clearly and effectively.

Element D: Social and Behavioral Sciences

As a result of their learning experience, students completing a Social or Behavioral Sciences Core class can:

• Recall the primary terminology, concepts, and findings of the specific social and behavioral science discipline.
• Expound on the primary theoretical approaches used in the specific social and behavioral science discipline.
• Describe the primary quantitative and qualitative research methods used in the specific social and behavioral science discipline.
• Convey the primary ethical issues raised by the practice and findings of the specific social and behavioral science discipline.
• Explore the range of relevant information sources in the specific social and behavioral science discipline.

Element E: Natural Sciences

As a result of their learning experience, students completing a natural sciences Core class can:

• Recall basic facts, principles, theories, and methods of modern science.
• Explain how scientific principles are formulated, evaluated, and either modified or validated.
• Use current models and theories to describe, explain, or predict natural phenomena.
• Apply scientific methods of inquiry appropriate to the discipline to gather data and draw evidence-based conclusions.
• Acknowledge that scientific data must be reproducible and have intrinsic variations and limitations.
• Apply foundational knowledge and discipline-specific concepts to address issues or solve problems.
• Explain how scientific principles are used in understanding the modern world and the impact of science on the contemporary world.
• Gather, comprehend, apply and communicate credible information on scientific topics, evaluate evidence-based scientific arguments in a logical fashion, and distinguish between scientific and non-scientific evidence and explanations.

Global Inquiry (GI)

As a result of their learning experience, students completing a GI-designated course can:

• Describe the global processes that have shaped historically attested societies and/or contemporary global trends, patterns, and processes and how they relate to specific regions and issues.
• Engage in historical and/or cross-cultural inquiry, analysis, and critiques of historical, social, political, economic, and aesthetic diversity around the globe.
• Integrate comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and multi-cultural worldviews and critical thinking frameworks to analyze crucial global issues.
• Gain the intellectual tools, skills, and knowledge to be engaged and knowledgeable citizens in a rapidly changing world.

Inclusive Excellence (IE)

As a result of their learning experience, students completing an IE-designated course can:

• Describe identity as multifaceted and constituting multiple categories of difference such as race, color, language, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, socio-economic status, and intersectionality as operating by individual and group.
• Describe how cultures (including their own) are shaped by the intersections of a variety of factors such as race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, ethnicity, nationality, and/or other socially constructed categories of difference.
• Recognize the complex elements of cultural biases on a global scale by identifying historic, economic, political, and/or social factors, such as ethnocentrism, colonialism, slavery, democracy, and imperialism.
• Recognize how sociocultural status and access to (or distribution of) resources are informed by cultural practices within historical, social, cultural, and economic systems.

Additionally, students can accomplish at least one of the two outcomes below:

• Articulate the meaning of empathy and its role in strengthening civic responsibilities and reducing the negative impact of societal stereotypes.
• Demonstrate empathy by successfully interpreting intercultural experiences from one’s own and others’ worldview.

Integrated Writing (IW)

As a result of their learning experience, students completing an IW-designated course can:

• Demonstrate their understanding of course content.
• Is appropriate for the audience and purpose of a particular writing task.
• Demonstrate the degree of mastery of disciplinary writing conventions appropriate to the course (including documentation conventions).
• Show competency in standard edited American English.
• Requires that students receive a response to their writing and have opportunities to use that response to improve their writing.
• ​Criteria for evaluating writing are clearly articulated and provided to the students.
• Counts towards the course grade.  Students should not be able to pass the course without completing the writing assignments.
• Over the course of the semester, student writing in “IW Core” courses should cumulatively be a minimum of 2500 words and student writing in “IW in the major” courses should cumulatively be a minimum of 5000 words.

History

As a result of their learning experience, students completing a history Core class can:

• Locate a problem and pose questions to guide a particular study that is limited to a focused historical period, specific historical figure, people, ideology, or belief system.
• Recognize how historians study groups or peoples that may not have been included in earlier historical studies to reach new, or revised, interpretations of history.
• Analyze, interpret, and/or evaluate primary historical sources within their historical context.
• Construct an argument that is based on historical evidence in response to a question.

Oral Communications

As a result of their learning experience, students completing an Oral Communications Core class can:

• Develop speeches that are consistent and appropriate for the purpose, context, and audience.
• Present speeches using effective verbal and nonverbal delivery techniques and appropriate presentation aids.
• Critically and constructively evaluate their own and others’ speeches.
• Use appropriate diction (tone, voice, style, formality) for the situation.
• Use professional spoken language while appreciating that other language variations are valid.

Note: an oral communications class is not required as part of the 36 hours of the Wright State Core.  If taken, this class will count towards the Additional Core Courses needed to reach the the 36 hours required.

General Policy Governing The Wright State Core

Placement for Wright State Core

Testing Services provides placement tests in mathematics and English (writing) to help determine the proper beginning course for new Wright State University students who have not completed a college-level course in mathematics or English composition. There are no fees for placement testing in mathematics or writing.

Transfer Students and the Wright State Core

A transfer student who has completed the Ohio Transfer Module (OTM) at a previous institution is considered to have completed the Wright State Core.

A transfer student who has not completed the transfer module may satisfy Wright State University’s Core requirements by combining courses completed at a previous college or university with courses in the WSU Core. These courses must total at least 36 credit hours and comply with the distribution requirements in the table above.

Courses Completed Prior to Matriculation at Wright State

A transfer course completed prior to matriculation at WSU that meets any one of the following three criteria may be applied toward WSU’s Core requirements.

1. The course is equivalent to a WSU Core course.
2. The course is not equivalent to a WSU Core course but is part of an institution’s approved Ohio Transfer Module.
3. The course was completed at an institution without an approved Ohio Transfer Module and both of the following conditions are satisfied:
   • The course is included in the institution’s General Education program.
   • The course significantly addresses the learning objectives of an Element of the WSU Core.

A transfer course that meets one of the above criteria may be applied to any Core Element for which the learning objectives are significantly addressed.

Courses Completed Subsequent to Matriculation at Wright State

To be applicable to a WSU Core requirement, a transfer course completed subsequent to matriculation at WSU must be equivalent to the WSU Core course being replaced.

Approved Transfer Module Courses

All Ohio public institutions of higher education have identified courses as part of their Ohio Transfer Module (OTM), which is a subset or the complete set of that college’s or university’s general education requirements in A.A., A.S., and baccalaureate degrees. The OTM contains 54-60 quarter hours or 36-40 semester hours of course credit in English composition; mathematics, statistics, and formal/symbolic logic; arts/humanities; social and behavioral sciences; and natural sciences.

Courses approved in each of the five OTM areas will be applied toward the Wright State Core as follows:

• English: Composition - Approved OTM courses will be applied toward Element A.
• English: Oral Communication - Approved OTM courses will be applied toward an additional Core course.
• Mathematics, Statistics, and Logic - Approved OTM courses will be applied toward Element B.
• Arts and Humanities - Approved OTM courses will be applied toward Element C.
• Social and Behavioral Sciences - Approved OTM courses will be applied toward either Element D.
• Natural Sciences - Approved OTM courses will be applied toward Element E.

Note: Any additional Ohio Transfer Module courses not applied to the categories above may count toward the required 36 hours in the Wright State Core provided the area distribution requirements have been satisfied (using courses listed above) and the courses were completed prior to matriculation at WSU.

Integrated Writing (IW) Courses in the Wright State Core

A transfer student who has completed the transfer module that is part of the Ohio Articulation and Transfer Policy will be considered as having met the Writing in the Core requirements.

Transfer students who have not completed the Ohio Transfer Module but who have completed the equivalent of the Wright State Core when they matriculate at Wright State will be considered as having met the IW requirement in the Wright State Core.

Transfer students who have completed the equivalent of less than 50% (less than 19 semester hours) of the Wright State Core when they matriculate at Wright State must complete two IW courses in the Wright State Core.

Transfer students who have completed the equivalent of 50-75% (19-28 semester hours) of the Wright State Core when they matriculate must complete one IW course within the Wright State Core.

Transfer students who have already completed the equivalent of 75% or more of the Wright State Core may satisfy the IW requirement by completing one IW course in the Wright State Core or by preparing an acceptable portfolio that includes writing on demand or by completing an approved advanced writing course.

NOTE: All transfer students must complete two IW courses in the major. Any additional IW course completed in the major beyond the two used to meet the major requirement can be used to complete the IW requirement in the Core.

For more information about the Wright State Core, please refer to policy 4130.