Essential Education Experience

Essential Education Experiences (E3s) are upper-division courses meant to help prepare our students for an ever-changing, dynamic, and diverse world. An E3 is a 3-credit course that increases social awareness, global understandings, and/or cultural competencies through hands-on learning. The goal of an E3 is for students to move beyond their own viewpoint and learn from multiple perspectives, applying their Essential Abilities toward a project or activity that engages with a community in a meaningful way.

Students have three different options for meeting the Essential Education Experience requirement:

1. Courses from SHAPE* disciplines with a significant civic engagement or service learning component.
2. Planned student experiences, such as some faculty-led study away programs.
3. A curricular course that leverages the student's extracurricular experiences, leadership roles, or other philanthropic activities. The course provides a curricular framework in developing cultural competency and skill in community-based collaborations to support the student-driven experience. Student projects will need to be pre-approved for these courses to ensure they meet E3 requirements.

* SHAPE: Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts for People and the Environment/Economy 

The Essential Education Experience is intended as a culminating or near-culminating curricular element, requiring that students first complete at least three requirements in the Pathway. Students will reflect on how they are using the Essential Abilities they have developed throughout their Essential Education program engagement, providing students practice in using these transferable skills successfully in widely diverse situations and settings.

Essential Education Experience

Required: 3 credits