Kick-off for CSI General Education Webletter

General Education is a broad course of study that encompasses the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. It strengthens skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and effective communicating, thus preparing students for full and active participation in society as well as success in your chosen career. Through disciplined effort and hard work you will learn to challenge unexamined opinions, biases, and prejudices. The College of Staten Island Education courses will expose students to approaches, tools, and knowledge from a wide range of disciplines that will open their mind to possibilities that they may not have considered. General Education encourages students to be intellectually dynamic and to be lifelong learners.

St. Augustine and General Education

By Richard Powers

With someone like Saint Augustine you never know what you are going to get, even when you think you are going to get nothing but his doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. After all, that is the title, De Trinitate. But this saint did love digressions. He was known to break into song during his sermons, setting new words to popular tunes. So I really didn’t expect (but I wasn’t completely surprised) that Augustine would start talking about general education in the middle of De Trinitate. But he did. At least that’s what I got out of it. For the full story Click here

On Teaching English 111

By Terry Rowden

My English 111 class, one of the first I taught after arriving at CSI, would set the tone for what many students considered a college class to be like, so it was important to me not to teach an entry level English course disguised as a general education course. I was determined that it be a true general education course, that is, one hat awakened students to the possibilities of education. With that in mind, I envisioned English 111 as a transdisciplinary introduction to what it means to be a college student in terms of class work, critical inquiry, and personal responsibility. For the full story Click here

What Makes a General Education Course a General Education Course?

By Jonathan Sassi

What makes a general education course a general education course? What makes a course in social scientific analysis a course in social scientific analysis? Well you may ask. I had to ask myself those questions when I began to teach one of my regular course offerings, HST 244, the survey of United States history from the colonial period through the end of the Civil War in 1865. Over the years, I have developed an approach to the course that aims to meet the needs of both students taking the class as part of their history major and the typically larger number of students who are enrolled so as to satisfy the general education category of “social scientific analysis.” I do so by focusing the course around the twin themes of “coverage” and “uncoverage.” For the full story Click here