Philosophy of General Education

2005 - 2006 College of the Ozarks Catalog

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A deliberately connected web of general education courses and co-curricular activities provide occasion for the study of a broad range of subjects and approaches to student learning. Through the General Education program, students should acquire knowledge as well as crucial skills and attitudes to nourish their intellectual curiosity and their moral imagination and to aid their pursuit of a satisfying, productive life. Students should gain confidence as well as competencies from this program, a program that will enable students to adapt to a constantly changing world while holding fast to values that hold eternally true. Implicit in this program is the goal of showing the multidisciplinary nature of learning so necessary to the ideal of well-roundedness as well as the more focused disciplinary learning.

The General Education program ultimately should connect the various major/minor programs and the many co-curricular activities to create an undergraduate experience at College of the Ozarks that embraces the unique five-fold mission of the College, that weaves itself from the freshman through the senior years, and that culminates with a capstone experience which attempts to synthesize key aspects of the General Education program.

A well structured General Education, honestly pursued, should produce college graduates who are able, aware and morally decent. It is the conviction of College of the Ozarks that the General Education curriculum supports and supplements the five-fold mission of the institution; academic, vocational, spiritual, patriotic and cultural.