Prescott College has identified six learning outcomes for general education in undergraduate studies. Each learning outcome identified is a commitment to Prescott College’s mission.
• Humanities and Arts Knowledge
• Global Cultural Literacy
• Civic Engagement
• Ecological Literacy
• Skills for Inquiry, Analysis, and Synthesis
• Skills for Self-Direction and Lifelong Learning
Humanities and Arts Knowledge
An appreciation of literature, language, and the arts provides the foundational knowledge needed to pursue critical and creative approaches to reading, writing, problem solving, communication, performance, and the making of art. A well-rounded understanding of the humanities and the arts supports the development of an informed aesthetic, effective communication and performance skills, and insight into different cultural and artistic sensibilities, forms, contexts, and histories.
Global Cultural Literacy
Global cultural literacy involves both an academic and a personal understanding of the depth of our interdependence as human beings and communities. It involves an awareness of the challenges that we face and must address as a global community. It requires the ability to critically analyze the ways that power is distributed within regions and societies and to trace the historical roots and current reality of social, political and economic inequality. It involves knowing about diverse cultures of the world, about differences of gender and sexuality, race, religion and ethnicity, and developing a relationship with oneself and one’s own position within larger systems of privilege. To be literate in this area is to learn to listen, share and reciprocate, to reach across borders of unequal power with critical awareness, humility, and commitment.
Civic Engagement
Civic engagement requires a combination of knowledge, skills, and motivation that are applied with the intention of creating positive social change in communities ranging from local to global. It may involve political or non-political activities of individual or collective
concern that demonstrate personalization of learning, ethical reasoning, and social action of potential benefit to the community.
Ecological Literacy
Ecological literacy is based on an understanding of unperturbed natural systems and an examination of human impact on the integrity of those systems and the diversity of life. Ecological literacy involves exploring humanity's historic and current relationship with the natural world and the processes that sustain all life. It ultimately fosters healthy relationships between human communities and the natural world.
Skills for Inquiry, Analysis, and Synthesis
Inquiry is a systematic process of exploring issues, facts, or works through the collection and analysis of evidence that result in informed conclusions or judgments. Analysis is the process of breaking complex topics or issues into parts to gain a better understanding of them; synthesis is the dynamic assembly of discrete elements into new wholes or systems. Skills for inquiry, analysis, and synthesis include the capacity to use research techniques, mathematics, and other qualitative and quantitative scholarly methods as tools for learning in the competence and the breadths.
Skills for Self-Direction and Lifelong Learning
The skills and dispositions involved in lifelong learning are curiosity, transfer, independence, initiative, and reflection. Lifelong learning depends on the ability to be a self-directed learner who integrates and applies these skills and abilities to improve her or his knowledge, skills, and competence to meet new challenges throughout life.
