Gen Eds at Temple

<p>For current or past Temple students: What is your opinion of Temple's Gen Ed courses? I noticed that Temple requires specific gen ed courses, like Mosaic I and II humanities, and a limited choice in other categories (world society, human behavior, race & diversity, world society, us society) and some that can be some that can be waived for real hard math/sciences courses (quanititative literacy, science and technology).</p>

<p>Temple's gen ed system seems unlike most schools that simply require a student to select courses from different areas (for example, one literature, one math, three science, one history, etc.). Are Temple's gen ed courses interesting, or are they a waste of time? It seems like a student must spend alot of time fulfilling these gen ed requirements..does it make it hard for students who are undecided and are trying to explore different majors? With so many gen eds to fulfill, it seems like it would be hard to have enough room in the schedule for exploration.</p>

<p>Please give me your feedback on Temple gen eds! Thanks</p>

<p>That’s the exact same thing I was thinking, I was wondering if these Gen Ed classes were a waste of time. Like for me, I recently just met with an advisor (yesterday) at Temple and he told me its good for undecided majors because you get a chance to explore and get a taste of other courses. so for undecided majors its defi. beneficial i guess. as for me, being a pre med in Neuroscience, i found it to be a bit odd because I’m transferring from maryland and they don’t do that here, like I mean we don’t have that specific Gen Ed’s we HAVE to take, we can just take classes we find interesting and that suits us.</p>

<p>When I met the advisor he told me to get done w/ my gen Ed’s first and get that out of the way so that I can fully concentrate on my course requirements later on, but for you I think it would also be a good idea to do that also so that you can explore more. its sad though, because I thought we can take “extra” classes after we are done with our CORE credits, which interests us but i guess not since they already picked for us and set it as a requirement.</p>

<p>I think most Temple students have a mixed opinion of GenEds. While it’s good that we’re getting a well-rounded education by having to take different classes in different areas (US/World Society, English, Humanities, Science, etc), it can be annoying because most students know where they want to concentrate their studies and don’t want to have to take all these other unrelated classes. The nice thing about Temple’s GenEd system, though, is that instead of being forced to take things like World History 101 and Biology 101, there’s a wide variety of different things to take. There are a lot of different classes spread across different subjects that satisfy GenEd requirements. This past semester I took a philosophy class that satisfied my US Society requirement. You can fulfill these requirements with classes that you might find interesting.</p>

<p>As far as when you should take GenEds, it’s completely up to the individual student and his/her plans/schedule. If you plan on studying abroad, you might want to save your GenEds for then, because GenEds are classes that are almost guaranteed to be offered at other campuses if classes required for your major aren’t. It all depends. Others want to get them out of the way in the beginning so that you can concentrate more on your own major later on.</p>

<p>hi kris thanks so much for the feedback.</p>

<p>my D is undecided but it seemed like taking gen eds the first year was not the best way to try to explore a major. for instance, my D thinks she might want to major in Psych or business. so she may want to take an intro business course and an intro psych to get the flavor of each. the info we received on suggested courses for undecided majors, though, suggested that she fill up her first year with gen eds and only one course in a potential major. it is good to know that you are not required to follow this plan.</p>

<p>what are you majoring in?</p>

<p>My major is Broadcasting, Telecommunications, and Mass Media. Temple will give you a suggested plan for which courses you should take in which year, but you’re not obligated to follow that. I procrastinated in doing all of my placement tests and signing up for orientation, so I got the last orientation date and consequently was in the last group to sign up for classes. Because of that, all of the classes I was recommended to take were full, and I ended up taking a bunch of Gen Eds instead of classes for my major.</p>