General education is a required program of study developed and approved by Lock Haven’s faculty to ensure that our students acquire a broad intellectual context for their majors as well as a foundation for the complex and multiple roles they will undertake as citizens of the twenty-first century.  As students begin upper-division study, faculty will assume their abilities, based on successful completion of general education courses, to communicate effectively in both written and oral form and demonstrate an appropriate level of numerical literacy.

Our students, as citizens, will have futures extending beyond service to professions and places of employment.  They will have responsibilities as members of a family, community, nation, and world.  Increasingly, our graduates will be called upon to make informed choices regarding public policy, health care, education, the environment, and technology.  While a general education program cannot equip them with information relevant to every situation they will encounter, our goal is to provide them with the skills, research tools, modes of inquiry, and knowledge of the arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences that will assist them in making responsible decisions.

In creating a general education program, the faculty makes certain assumptions about the future: on-going advances in technology, rapidly expanding sources of information, growing global interdependence and increasing multicultural interactions, changing natural resources, varying practices in labor and employment, and revised conceptions of the nature of knowledge.  Lock Haven’s faculty has developed a wide variety of educational experiences that allow students to explore topics from different points of view and to integrate information from various sources with the intent of creating knowledge or forming new perspectives.

Our program challenges students intellectually, encourages them to raise questions and helps them in establishing the foundation for active and effective participation in an ever-changing world and complex future.

General Education requirements for the degrees of  B.Ed.,  B.F.A. and B.S.: