Pacific's General Education Program exposes students to areas of study outside of their major. In their General Education classes, students develop essential knowledge and skills that are transferable to other courses at Pacific as well as to their personal and public lives. The mission of Pacific's General Education Program is to promote self-understanding, citizenship, and career development.
Due to the current situation with COVID-19, we are currently working remotely.
If you need to contact us to change a PACS class or for any other general education related issue, please email either Cindy Udermann, Administrative Assistant for GE/PACS at cudermann@pacific.edu or Chris Goff, Director of General Education at cgoff@pacific.edu.
Thank you for your patience during this time.
Mission
- Self-Understanding — One goal of Pacific's General Education Program is fundamentally personal: to enrich students' self-understanding and expand their interests in preparation for a fulfilling life. Students are exposed to new intellectual, moral, spiritual, and aesthetic possibilities. Through the interaction with others from different backgrounds and the study of different disciplines, students come to understand who they are and the sources of their beliefs. They thus gain the skills to identify, express and analyze their beliefs and to fashion a philosophy of life that can guide them in their future endeavors. Students may also find life-long pleasure in learning, self-reflection, and conversation.
- Citizenship — Another goal is to produce engaged and informed citizens who advance a democratic society by contributing to political and civil life and by committing themselves to the service of others. General education fosters the skills to evaluate complex social and political issues and teaches the moral and political grounds that inform political action and service in a democracy. The health of a society depends on informed and active citizens who can balance the public good and self-interest.
- Career Development — Finally, the General Education Program prepares students to enter professional life by developing practical skills that are valuable to employers and essential to civil society. These skills include the abilities to express oneself clearly and cogently in writing and orally, to be diligent and careful in the preparation of one's work, to interpret and evaluate information, to think creatively in order to solve problems, to work independently as well as collegially in groups with a sensitivity toward cultural differences, to use technology, and to treat others ethically in their professional interactions.
Student Learning Outcomes
Pacific's General Education mission of fostering self-understanding, citizenship and career development is advanced by the completion of three Pacific Seminars and six to nine courses in the Breadth Program, all of which introduce students to the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts. These courses develop the following intellectual and practical skills:
- Written communication
- Oral communication
- Critical thinking
- Research skills
- Quantitative thinking
- Cross-cultural awareness
- Ethical reasoning
- Civic responsibility
- Aesthetic judgment
The Pacific Seminars
Students at Pacific explore the question of a good society through a series of three academic seminars. These seminars develop students' critical thinking skills about significant personal, social, and political issues by means of extensive writing, reading, and class discussion.