welcome back class uh today we're going to talk about general education requirements here at Alabama A&M uh some of you may be in class wondering why am I taking this English or why am I taking this art and today we're going to talk more about that and also help you understand your undergraduate bulletin so here at Alabama A&M university all undergraduate degree programs have a set of courses that you must take before transitioning into your major specific courses these could include foreign languages like Spanish or Chinese this could also include Fine Arts like uh Art 101 or music 101 general education requirements here at Alabama A&M consist of six hours of written composition 12 hours of humanities and Fine Arts 11 hours of natural and physical sciences 12 hours of history and social and Behavioral Sciences so what we're going to do right now is I want to go through each one of those areas and break them down so that you understand uh what written composition is what Humanities and Fine Arts is um along with the other areas that were mentioned uh previously so if you take a look uh here at the screen in front of you you can see area one is written composition most of you are likely in an English 101 composition course uh some of you may be thinking well I took English 101 when I was in high school while this may be true if you did not have your advanced placement or dual enrollment credits transfer into the into the institution uh those courses are not counted towards your degree program which means that you would need to take English 101 uh again for your undergraduate degree program most undergraduate degree programs require six hours of written composition which means that you will take two of these classes as there are three hours a piece so English 101 is likely your first course that you would take uh for written composition and then you will likely take English 102 if you are an honors student then you would take this English 102 101 and 102h going down to the humanities and Fine Arts I me mentioned earlier that you're required to take a total of 12 hours within the humanities and Fine Arts three of these hours must be fine arts and you can see down here to the left you have your art 101 music 101 uh your theater appreciation those are courses that are considered to be fine art courses you also must take three hours of literature uh which you can see down here is your English 2011 your English 20 to your world literature and your American literature courses after that you then have to take a remaining of six hours which can be split up between the humanities courses and the Fine Arts courses some of you might already be enrolled in Humanities courses which could be your Chinese French or Spanish classes uh some of you may also be taking an ethics course as well uh something to understand here is that if you are taking a history course most of the times that history course must be in sequence meaning if you take English 201 you have to take English 202 after that you can't take 202 before you take the 201 course another thing to be aware of here is that if you are a civil engineering electrical engineering or mechanical engineering major you only need nine of the hours uh in area 2 which is humanity and Fine Arts which means that you would need three of these classes as opposed to four of them down to the next session next section which is area three your natural physical sciences and Mathematics uh we mentioned earlier that there is an 11h hour minimum here to achieve this three of those hours must be in mathematics and the other eight hours must be in Natural Sciences uh one thing that I will note here is that if you uh enter into the university with a act math score of 15 or below you are likely enrolled in a math 1 011 012 or 013 if you are enrolled in one of those classes that class does not count to be used toward the uh general education requirement you will still be required to take an additional math that will count toward your degree program the remaining eight hours must come from a natural or physical science you can see the natural phys physical sciences here some of you may be enrolled in BIO 101 in the lab uh some of you may be in BIO 102 in the lab if you are biology major you're required to take biology 103 and 103 lab uh chemistry 101 and chemistry 101 lab uh and another one would be the physical science 101 and 101 101 layup um your degree program will require you to take a uh different physical science some of them are open to you taking either one but there are some Majors that require you to take a specific one I mentioned biology having to take uh bio 103 most engineering Majors will have to take some form of chemistry 101 and 101 lab down to area four history and social Behavioral Sciences it's mentioned before you are required to take 12 hours of these courses three of those hours must be in history uh at least six of those hours must be in other disciplines uh around social and Behavioral Sciences if you take once you take his history uh you must complete six hours in sequence I mentioned this earlier but you must take history 101 and history 102 in a sequence or your major might require you to take history 201 and 202 in sequence here are the other topics uh the other courses available in the social and Behavioral Sciences I hope that this gives you an overview of why you are enrolled in some of the general education courses that you enrolled in before again all undergraduate degree programs have a set of courses that you must take before transitioning into your major courses all of this information can be found on page 76 of the undergraduate bulletin which is linked below so now that we've discussed the general education requirements I want to run you through what an undergraduate bulletin look like and what is it used for essentially your undergraduate bulletin is a guide uh it provides you with all of the courses that you need to meet the graduation requirements here at Alabama andm uh what I've done is is taken the time to highlight those general education courses that we just talked about so you'll see your orientation one-on-one course which is required for all first year students this course is designed to help you learn more about the institution and learn how to navigate uh campus life here Alabama and um English 101 which we talked about as one of the written composition uh general education requirements your math your history sequence and then if you look over here in the second semester you'll also see the Fine Arts that we talked about the humanities and the Fine Arts that we talked about uh and then well on down into your sophomore year with you have your literature your economics your history sequence social Behavioral Sciences and your Humanities and fine artarts as mentioned in the previous session each um area of general education requirements has a certain number of uh credit hours that you must complete before moving into some of your major courses as you look at at the undergraduate bulletin uh you'll see that there is this is the one for biology and you'll see that there is a bio 101 most Majors have an intro course to the major there may be an intro to mechanical engineering an intro to civil engineering um these change based off of the major each undergraduate bulletin looks differently based off of whatever your major is what I will say one thing that is key when reading your undergraduate bulletin is to know that you do not have to take the courses in the way that they are listed they are a guide to help show you what all needs to be comped completed by the time that you graduate but this is not to say that you have to take these courses in your first semester some of you may take your first year experience English 101 your math and you may take a fine arts in your first semester and you may not have a chance to take bio 103 until your second semester this does not throw you off track uh our advisors work to make sure that you have the appropriate number of credit hours each semester to fulfill to become a a full-time student and to stay on track uh with your academic progress another thing to note on your undergraduate bulletin there are often times a super script number if you see this number one here this number one is letting you know that this is a general education requirement if the number has a number two next to it this is is saying that you must pass that class with a C or better is required for you to finish that course if you see a course with the number three uh like this pre-calculus uh Tri trigonometry course this means that you need to pass with a D or better is required for you to complete that course what I would like for you to do I want to encourage you to take some time to go through your own undergraduate bulletin uh there's a link below for you to access the full academic bulletin but if you go to Pages five and six it will provide an outline for you to show you exactly what page your undergraduate uh curriculum is on uh if you have questions about your undergraduate bulletin or your curriculum or any of the classes that you are enrolled in please contact your academic advisor and they can help guide you through the process of making sure that you on track to graduate thanks go buy dogs