University General Education Requirements (GERs)

General Education Requirements: Purpose

The General Education Requirements are an integral part of undergraduate education at Stanford. Their purpose is: 1) to introduce students to a broad range of fields and areas of study within the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, applied sciences, and technology; and 2) to help students prepare to become responsible members of society. Whereas the concentration of courses in the major is expected to provide depth, the General Education Requirements have the complementary purpose of providing breadth to a student's undergraduate program. The requirements are also intended to introduce students to the major social, historical, cultural, and intellectual forces that shape the contemporary world.

Fulfillment of the General Education Requirements in itself does not provide a student with an adequately broad education any more than acquiring the necessary number of units in the major qualifies the student as a specialist in the field. The major and the General Education Requirements are meant to serve as the nucleus around which the student is expected to build a coherent course of study by drawing on the options available among the required and elective courses.

Information regarding courses that have been certified to fulfill the General Education Requirements, and regarding a student's status in meeting these requirements, is available at the Office of the University Registrar. Course planning and advising questions related to the General Education Requirements should be directed to Undergraduate Advising and Research.

It is the responsibility of each student to ensure that he or she has fulfilled the requirements by checking in Axess within the Undergraduate Progress function or by checking with the Office of the University Registrar. This should be done at least two quarters before graduation.

Students should be very careful to note which set of General Education Requirements apply to them. The date of matriculation at Stanford determines which requirements apply to an individual student.

During Autumn Quarter 2004-05, the Academic Senate approved modifications to undergraduate General Education Requirements that become effective Autumn Quarter 2005-06 for all matriculated undergraduates who entered Stanford in Autumn Quarter 1996 and thereafter. The purpose of these modifications was 1) to give students a fuller and more articulate understanding of the purposes of the requirements and of a liberal arts education that these requirements embody; 2) to make a place in the curriculum for ethical reasoning to help make students aware of how pervasive ethical reasoning and value judgments are throughout the curriculum; and 3) to provide some greater freedom of choice by reducing the GERs by one course.

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Area Requirements

The following structure for General Education Requirements became effective with the 2005-06 entering freshman and transfer class:

• Introduction to the Humanities—one quarter introductory courses ­followed by two quarter thematic sequences. Introduction to the Humanities builds an intellectual foundation in the study of human thought, values, beliefs, creativity, and culture. Courses introduce students to methods of inquiry in the humanities: interdisciplinary methods in Autumn Quarter and discipline-based methods in Winter and Spring quarters.
• Disciplinary Breadth—requirement satisfied by completing five courses of which one course must be taken in each subject area. Disciplinary Breadth gives students educational breadth by providing experience in the areas of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Humanities, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and the Social Sciences.
• Education for Citizenship—requirement satisfied by completing two courses in different subject areas; or completing two Disciplinary Breadth courses which also satisfy different Education for Citizenship subject areas. Education for Citizenship provides students with some of the skills and knowledge that are necessary for citizenship in contemporary national cultures and participation in the global cultures of the 21st century. Education for Citizenship is divided into four subject areas: Ethical Reasoning, the Global Community, American Cultures, and Gender Studies.
  • Ethical Reasoning—Courses introduce students to the pervasiveness, complexity, and diversity of normative concepts and judgments in human lives, discuss skeptical concerns that arise about normative practices, review ways in which people have engaged in ethical reflection, and consider ethical problems in light of diverse ethical perspectives.
  • The Global Community—Courses address the problems of the emerging global situation. They may compare several societies in time and space or deal in depth with a single society, either contemporary or historical, outside the U.S. Challenges of note: economic globalization and technology transfer; migration and immigration; economic development, health; environmental exploitation and preservation; ethnic and cultural identity; and international forms of justice and mediation.
  • American Cultures—Courses address topics pertaining to the history, significance, and consequences of racial, ethnic, or religious diversity in the culture and society of the U.S.. Challenges of note: equity in education; employment and health; parity in legal and social forms of justice; preserving identity and freedom within and across communities.
  • Gender Studies—Courses address gender conceptions, roles, and relations, and sexual identity in a contemporary or historical context; they critically examine interpretations of gender differences and relations between men and women. Challenge of note: changing sexual and physiological realities in contemporary and historical perspective.

Courses certified as meeting the General Education Requirements must be taken for a letter grade and a minimum of 3 units of credit. A single course may be certified as fulfilling only one subject area within the General Education Requirements; the one exception is that a course may be certified to fulfill an Education for Citizenship subject area in addition to a Disciplinary Breadth subject area.

Courses that have been certified as meeting the requirements are identified in the Stanford Bulletin and the Time Schedule of Classes and on Axess with the notational symbols listed below. Students may search for courses by GER on Axess. A comprehensive list of certified courses also appears in the Time Schedule of Classes for that quarter. See the links above in the Table of Contents for this page for an online list of certified courses.

• Introduction to the Humanities
  • IHUM-1 (formerly GER:1a): first-quarter course
  • IHUM-2 (formerly GER:1b): second-quarter course
  • IHUM-3 (formerly GER:1c): third-quarter course
• Disciplinary Breadth
  • DB-EngrAppSci (formerly GER:2b): Engineering and Applied Sciences
  • DB-Hum (formerly GER:3a): Humanities
  • DB-Math (formerly GER:2c): Mathematics
  • DB-NatSci (formerly GER:2a): Natural Sciences
  • DB-SocSci (formerly GER:3b): Social Sciences
• Education for Citizenship
  • EC-AmerCul (formerly GER:4b): American Cultures
  • EC-GlobalCom (formerly GER:4a): Global Community
  • EC-Gender (formerly GER:4c):Gender Studies
  • EC-EthicReas (GER:4d): Ethical Reasoning

Continuing undergraduates who entered Stanford prior to Autumn 1996 may elect to complete either the set of Distribution Requirements in effect when they entered or the set of General Education Requirements effective Autumn 1996, revised Autumn 2005, and described above. Note: students will not, however, be permitted to mix the requirements of the two systems or to change from one system to the other after they have elected the system under which they wish to be monitored for graduation. If the 1996 (revised 2005) program of General Education Requirements is chosen, only certified courses passed with a letter grade and taken for 3 or more units can fulfill the requirements.

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Credit Transfer for GERs

Students may propose that work taken at another college or university be accepted in fulfillment of a General Education Requirement. In such cases, the Office of the University Registrar's External Credit Evaluation staff determines, after appropriate faculty consultation, whether the work is comparable to any of the specifically certified courses or course sequences.

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The Writing and Rhetoric Requirement

All instructors at Stanford University expect students to express themselves effectively in writing and speech. The Writing and Rhetoric requirement helps students meet those high expectations.

All candidates for the bachelor's degree, regardless of the date of matriculation, must satisfy the Writing and Rhetoric requirement. Transfer students are individually advised at the time of matriculation by the Office of the University Registrar's External Credit Evaluation section and, if necessary, the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) as to their status with regard to the requirement.

The current Writing and Rhetoric requirement, effective beginning 2003, includes courses at three levels. The first two levels are described in more detail below. Writing-intensive courses that fulfill the third level, the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement, are designated under individual department listings.

All undergraduates must satisfy the first-level Writing and Rhetoric requirement (WR 1) in one of three ways:

1. PWR 1: a course emphasizing writing and research-based argument.
2. SLE: writing instruction in connection with the Structured Liberal Education program.
3. Transfer credit approved by the Registrar's External Credit Evaluation office for this purpose.

All undergraduates must satisfy the second-level Writing and Rhetoric Requirement (WR 2) in one of four ways:

1. PWR 2, a course emphasizing writing, research, and oral presentation.
2. SLE, writing instruction in connection with the Structured Liberal Education program.
3. A course offered through a department or program certified as meeting the WR 2 requirement by the Writing and Rhetoric Governance Board. These courses will be designated as DWR 2.
4. Transfer credit approved by the Office of the University Registrar's External Credit Evaluation section for this purpose.

A complete listing of PWR 1 courses is available each quarter on the PWR web site at http://pwr.stanford.edu, and at the PWR office in Building 460, Room 223. Complete listings of PWR 2 and DWR 2 courses are available to students on the PWR web site the quarter before they are scheduled to complete the WR 2 requirement.

For a full description of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR), see the "Writing and Rhetoric, Program in" section of the Stanford Bulletin under the School of Humanities and Sciences, or click here for a pdf.

Students who matriculated prior to Autumn 2003 should consult previous issues of the Stanford Bulletin and the "Writing and Rhetoric, Program in" section of the Stanford Bulletin under the School of Humanities and Sciences to determine what requirements apply.

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The Language Requirement

To fulfill the Language Requirement, undergraduates who entered Stanford in Autumn 1996 and thereafter are required to complete one year of college-level study or the equivalent in a foreign language. Students may fulfill the requirement in any one of the following ways:

1. Complete three quarters of a first-year, 4-5 units language course at Stanford or the equivalent at another recognized post-secondary institution subject to current University transfer credit policies.
   
2. Score 4 or 5 on the Language Advanced Placement (AP) test in one of the following languages: Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Latin, or Spanish. Advanced Placement (AP) tests in foreign literature do not fulfill the requirement.
3. Achieve a satisfactory score on the SAT II Subject Tests in the following languages taken prior to college matriculation:
   • Chinese 630
   • Italian 630
   • French 640
   • Japanese 620
   • German 630
   • Korean 630
   • Latin 630
   • Hebrew 540
   • Spanish 630
4. Take a diagnostic test in a particular language which either:
   1. places them out of the requirement, or
   2. diagnoses them as needing one, two, or three additional quarters of college-level study. In this case, the requirement can then be fulfilled either by passing the required number of quarters of college-level language study at Stanford or the equivalent elsewhere, or by retaking the diagnostic test at a later date and placing out of the requirement.

Written placements are offered online throughout the summer in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Spanish for home background speakers.

For a full description of Language Center offerings, see the "Language Center" section the Stanford Bulletin under the School of Humanities and Sciences, or click here for a pdf.

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