Southern Oregon University Parent Guide
Southern Oregon University Studies
In 2006, SOU redesigned the general education curriculum, reflecting the University’s vision as a public liberal arts university that expands students’ intellectual horizons and helps them comprehend a diverse and changing world.
Built on student learning outcomes and measured by student work in progressively challenging courses, University Studies helps students adapt knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to new challenges.
The curriculum allows SOU to:
- Articulate specific areas that students need to achieve in order to succeed
- Align courses to ensure student learning
- Assess achievement
- Balance learning in the majors with a broader perspective of liberal arts
- Engage in collaborate and inquiry-based pedagogies
- Foster civic, social, and personal responsibility
- Integration strands help students deepen, apply, and transfer knowledge.
University Seminar is SOU’s first-year course that anchors University Studies and your student’s academic career. The three-term, topic-based seminars engage students as active learners and help students form a strong bond with peers while they talk, write, and think about challenging concepts and ideas. Topics range from medicine and science to culture and ethics, and a student can choose from 18 different seminars.
Faculty has designed the seminar around readings and activities that explore a focused subject or issue, but all students build the required academic skills through similar structured sequences of assignments and projects. The instructor will also serve as a first-year faculty advisor, ensuring frequent and informative communication between faculty and students.
