SDSU General Education Question

Colleges and Universities A-Z San Diego State University
1

Can someone please explain what these statements mean?

  1. No more than 12 units from one department can be used in General Education.
  2. No more than 7 units from one department can be used in sections II and IV combined (Foundations of Learning and Explorations of Human Experience), nor more than 10 units from one department in sections II, III, and IV combined (Foundations of Learning, American Institutions, and Explorations of Human Experience).
2

These are the SDSU General ED requirements for all students:
I. COMMUNICATION AND CRITICAL THINKING

  1. Oral Communication.
  2. Composition.
  3. Intermediate Composition and Critical Thinking.
    II. FOUNDATIONS
    A. Natural Sciences and Quantitative Reasoning.
    Physical Sciences
    Life Sciences
    Laboratory
    Mathematics/Quantitative Reasoning
    B. Social and Behavioral Sciences.
    C. Humanities.
    Literature
    Art, Classics, Dance, Drama, Humanities, and Music
    History
    Philosophy and Religious Studies
    Foreign Language
    III. AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS
    Refer to section of SDSU General Catalog on American Institutions requirement for approved course sequences.
    IV. EXPLORATIONS
    A. Natural Sciences.
    B. Social and Behavioral Sciences.
    C. Humanities.

Basically the statements are stating that you cannot take more than for example: 12 units of a Foreign language to fulfill the Humanities/Literature section of the General Ed requirements. You need to take a variety of courses to fulfill the 49 units of GE’s needed for graduation and have no one concentration in a certain area.

If you are an in-coming Freshman, you will be given a personalized class list of courses required for your 1st year to fulfill the GE requirements during orientation along with any AP/IB credit which could be used towards these requirements. You should meet with your advisor at least once a year to make sure you are on track with major and GE courses.

You can use this link and pull up My Map for your specific major and it will have a 4 year plan listed with your major and GE courses.

https://sunspot.sdsu.edu/pubred/!mymap.disp

3

@Gumbymom thanks for the response! That explains the first statement, but I still don’t understand what the second point is saying. The first statement says you can’t have 12 units from one department, then it says you can’t have 7 units in the second statement, then it says you can’t have 10 units from one department after that. I’m really confused.

4

The statement is saying overall out of all the Categories I,II,III, IV:

  1. You cannot have more than 12 units in one department.
  2. From Categories II and IV, you cannot have more than 7 units from the same department which would be for example taking more than 7 units of Psychology classes to fulfill the Behavioral science requirement in these categories unless of course you are a Psych major. If you are a Psych major, you can use 7 units toward the GE's but you would have to fulfill the other areas in this category.
  3. From Categories II, III and IV, you cannot have more than 10 units from for example History classes to fulfill the GE requirements.

It is much easier just to look at your map, since many of the your major courses will overlap with some of the GE requirements along with AP/IB credit. Again, the GE requirement unit limits are to make sure the student is well rounded.

Category I is required for all students and you usually fulfill #1 and #2 your Freshman year. #3 is fulfilled once you take the writing exam at end of Sophomore year. If you do well, you can get this course waived. If not, you may end up with 1-2 writing classes to fulfill the requirement.

IF you follow your major MAP and suggestions from your orientation advisor it will become clear.

5

@Gumbymom Once again, thank you for your response. It was very helpful!