Effective for all students entering Penn State Summer 2018 and after, students must complete at least 45 credits in General Education. These requirements are split into the Foundations, Knowledge Domains, Integrative Studies, and Cultures categories.

All Foundations courses require a C or better in order to fulfill the 15 required credits. This category is comprised of Writing & Speaking (GWS) and Quantification (GQ) courses. Typically, in order to fulfill the 9 credits of GWS, students will take ENGL 15, ENGL 202, and CAS 100. All students must take 6 credits in GQ, which is determined by their intended major and performance on the ALEKS Math Assessment. Students are not able to use substitutions to fulfill any of the Foundations requirements.

Students must take 30 credits in the Knowledge Domains. The Knowledge Domains are: Arts (GA; 6 credits), Humanities (GH; 6 credits), Social & Behavioral Sciences (GS; 6 credits), Natural Sciences (GN; 9 credits), and Health and Wellness (GHW; 3 credits). Students are able to utilize substitutions within the Knowledge Domains, which will be covered in detail in the substitutions section on the next page.

Students must take 6 credits of Integrative Studies courses, which can be fulfilled by Linked courses or Interdomain courses. At Behrend, most students will fulfill this requirement with Interdomain courses. An Interdomain course is one course that spans two Knowledge Domain areas; these courses are interdisciplinary in nature and typically have an "N" suffix. Students are not able to use substitutions to fulfill the Integrative Studies requirement.

This requirement has not changed from the former General Education system. Students must take 3 credits of United States Cultures and 3 credits of International Cultures, and they may not use substitutions to fulfill these requirements.

Substitutions, Degree Audits, and Other Considerations

There are two substitution options available to students within the Knowledge Domains. They may do one or both of these substitutions. The substitutions cannot eliminate a whole category.

If students are very intentional with their course selection, they may be able to fulfill the Knowledge Domain requirements with fewer than 30 credits (due to Interdomain courses). If this happens, students must still take 30 credits in the Knowledge Domains. They can simply take courses in any Knowledge Domain category to fulfill the 30 credit requirement.

Toward the bottom of a student's degree audit there is a section that keeps track of the 30 credit requirement. A student may have the other General Education requirements on their degree audit fulfilled but this one could remain unfulfilled. When working with a student, not only is it important to check the General Education information in the upper part of the degree audit, but this bottom portion should also be considered.

Scenario: This student is majoring in Marketing and plans to graduate from Behrend. Both ECON 102 and ECON 104 are required for the major, and they will fulfill the student's 6 required GS credits. However, she is also transferring in 3 credits of a PSYCH 100 direct equivalent from dual enrollment, which is also a GS. How can the student utilize those PSYCH 100 credits in her GenEds?

Solution: She can do a Move 3 substitution. She could take one fewer course in another category, such as GH, and utilize those 3 credits from the other category to account for the overload in the GS category.

Scenario: This student is a Behrend Communication major and has taken and passed the following Knowledge Domain courses: ASTRO 141N (N/GN/GA), LLED 215N (N/GA/GH), CHEM 1 (GN), THEA 100 (GA), ECON 102 (GS), PLSC 1 (GS), and KINES 82 (GHW). The student asks you if he could take ENGL 163N (N/GN/GH) next semester to finish his GH requirements and simultaneously complete a GN requirement. Would you recommend the student take this course to fulfill those two requirements? Additionally, he wants to know if he can do the World Language substitution to sub in his 12 credits of Spanish for one of the GenEd requirements. Is this possible?

Solution: While ENGL 163N does count as an N, GN, and GH, the student has 3 of his 6 GH credits fulfilled by LLED 215N already, which is also partially GH. To complete his remaining 3 GH requirements, he will need to take a stand-alone GH course; he needs at least one course in each category that is NOT an Interdomain (N) course. He could take ENGL 163N and it would fulfill a GN requirement for him, but it would not complete his final GH requirement; he would need to take a stand-alone GH, such as PHIL 1, to complete that category. Regarding the World Language substitution, the student is not eligible to utilize his 12th credit-level of Spanish to fulfill a GenEd requirement because the Communication major requires 12 credits of a World Language. If he takes one more course above the 12th credit level, then he could sub that in using the World Language substitution; or, if he were intending a major that doesn't require a language, such as Mechanical Engineering, then he would be able to utilize the substitution with his 12th credit-level course.

Scenario: This student has fulfilled all of the Knowledge Domain categories in 27 credits. They express during an advising meeting that their Knowledge Domain GenEds are done. How would you advise the student?

Solution: All students need at least 30 credits in the Knowledge Domains. Even though this student has fulfilled each category, they still need to take one more course that is in one of the Knowledge domain categories, and in this instance, it wouldn't matter which category it falls into because the requirements for each are already fulfilled.