Undergraduate degrees at AUA consist of two components: the Major requirements and the General Education requirements.
While the Major gives students depth, specialization, and career preparation, General Education gives breadth and a foundation of general knowledge, perspectives, and skills for life.
Both are carefully designed components to assure that graduates are ready for life-long learning, whether in the classroom, on the job, or on their own.
The General Education requirements consist of a minimum of 15 courses or 45 semester credits and have two components:
- Foundation Courses (18 credits/6 courses), and
- Breadth Requirements (a minimum of 27 credits/9 courses), in coherent clusters of three courses in each of three broad sectors (Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences, Quantitative Sciences), selected from a range of electives outside the student’s major in consultation with the student’s academic adviser (BSES and BSDS students should check with the Program Chair for their respective requirements).
Each of the three clusters must include at least one lower division course and at least one upper division (integrative or advanced) course.
A cohesive cluster looks like this:
Cohesive Clusters are groups of three or more related courses that are connected thematically by content and build on and/or complement each other (give depth or breadth) in one or more disciplinary ways of thinking.
In order to assist students, courses suitable for forming cohesive clusters are coded by quadrant numbers. Courses from the same quadrant form clusters that satisfy the GenEd breadth requirement. For more information, please visit http://catalog2020-21.aua.am/how-to-form-gen-ed-cohesive-clusters/
Themes 1, 2, 3 satisfy Arts and Humanities (AH)
Themes 4, 5, 6 satisfy Social Sciences (SS)
Themes 7, 8, 9 satisfy Quantitative Sciences (QS)
Some Sample Clusters: The numbers in parenthesis indicate the theme for GenEd course cluster formation. (A course can only be counted toward one theme.)
| ARTS & HUMANITIES | SOCIAL SCIENCES | QUANTITATIVE SCIENCES |
|
CHSS 112 Logic and Rhetoric (1, 3) CHSS 130 Introduction to Art (1) CHSS 272 Comparative Religion (1, 2, 3, 4, 6) |
PSIA 103 Intro to Armenian Government (4) CHSS 128 History of the Modern World (2, 4) CHSS 290 Cultural Geography (2, 4) |
ENV 101 Intro to Environmental Sciences (7, 8, 9) ENV 230 Water (7, 8) CSE 241 Data Mining (7, 8, 9) |
The upper level courses in each cluster (in italics) build upon and integrate the knowledge and skills of the other courses, adding perspectives, depth and breadth of knowledge and disciplinary approaches, and subtlety and complexity of analysis.
The term “foundation” in “foundation courses” refers to the fact that these are university-wide requirements for all undergraduates–a learning experience shared as a common point of reference for all undergraduate students. It does not refer to the content of the courses per se, but to the function of these courses in the overall General Education program at AUA.
All undergraduate students must take the following required Gen Ed courses:
- Foundation Courses
All undergraduate students must take the following 6 foundation courses:
| Semester/Year | Freshman Year | Sophomore Year | Junior Year |
| Fall | Freshman Seminar 1 | Armenian Language & Literature 1 | Armenian History 1 |
| Spring | Freshman Seminar 2 | Armenian Language & Literature 2 | Armenian History 2 |
Armenian Language/Literature 1 and 2 and Armenian History 1 and 2 are taught in Armenian. Non Republic of Armenia citizens who did not graduate from an RoA high school whose language of instruction is Armenian will be eligible to enroll in an English-language section.
- Physical Education, First Aid, Civil Defense
All undergraduate students are required to take 120 hours of Physical Education, and 40 hours of First Aid and Civil Defense training during their studies. At AUA, Physical Education is scheduled for the first two years, and First Aid and Civil Defense are scheduled during the first year only. Please visit http://catalog2020-21.aua.am/physical-education-first-aid-and-civil-defense-requirement/ for more information about the Physical Education, First Aid and Civil Defense requirements.
For further information on General Education at AUA, please visit: https://gened.aua.am