Learning Outcomes

Undergraduate Learning Outcomes

The CSUMB Undergraduate Learning Outcomes state the knowledge, skills, and abilities that CSUMB students have acquired and demonstrate upon graduation. These outcomes are guided by the Founding Vision Statement, the University Mission, its Core Values, and Academic Goals, so CSUMB graduates can promote human rights, health and wellness, environmental integrity, and economic vitality to contribute to a just and sustainable world for present and future generations.

ULO 1:  Intellectual Skills

CSUMB graduates demonstrate competence in critical thinking, written and oral communication, information literacy, and quantitative reasoning.

ULO 2:  Personal, Professional, and Social Responsibility

CSUMB graduates engage in ethical reasoning and public action that is informed by historical, multicultural, global, ecological, and equity-oriented perspectives.

ULO 3:  Integrative Knowledge

CSUMB graduates synthesize and connect knowledge, skills, and experiences across disciplines, allowing them to address new and complex situations.

ULO 4:  Specialized Knowledge

CSUMB graduates apply knowledge, theories, methods, and practices in a chosen field of study to address real-world challenges and opportunities.

General Education Learning Outcomes

A1: Oral Communication

Listening:

1. Apply active and dialogic listening in group deliberation to understand multiple perspectives and identify common ground.
2. Accurately summarize a speaker’s message on his/her own terms.
3. Analyze and evaluate arguments for coherence, logic, ethics, style, and audience appropriateness.

Speaking:

1. Craft a speech/presentation through multiple drafts to achieve an intended purpose.
2. Adapt content and style to audience, purpose, and context.
3. Choose sources using criteria such as relevance, diversity of perspectives, and credibility.
4. Integrate own ideas with those from appropriate sources and attribute information to sources.
5. Justify claims with evidence and attention to assumptions.
6. Select and apply appropriate organizational patterns and mechanics such as previews, transitions, parallelism, etc.
7. Engage audiences through nonverbal communication.

A2: Written Communication

Reading:

1. Develop and apply flexible strategies for reading according to purpose and context.
2. Accurately summarize multiple perspectives on author’s own terms.
3. Analyze and evaluate arguments for coherence, logic, ethics, style, and audience appropriateness.

Writing:

1. Develop and apply flexible strategies for drafting, collaborating, and revising according to purpose and context.
2. Adapt content and style to audience, purpose, and context.
3. Select and apply appropriate genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics.
4. Choose courses using criteria such as relevance, diversity of perspectives, and authority.
5. Justify claims with evidence and attention to assumptions.
6. Integrate own ideas with those from appropriate sources and attribute information to sources.
7. Apply tools of cohesion and coherence (e.g., transitions, parallelism, repetition) to unify a written text around a central idea.

A3: Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking:

1. Accurately summarize multiple perspectives on authors’ own terms.
2. Analyze verbal and nonverbal messages in terms of audience, purpose, and context.
3. Trace the development of a central idea through a text.
4. Evaluate information sources using criteria such as expertise, authority, audience, purpose, and context.
5. Assess the relevance, adequacy, and credibility of evidence used to reach conclusions.
6. Distinguish between fact and inference, and among types of claims (e.g., factual, normative, interpretive, and causal).
7. Identify and explain modes of reasoning (including but not limited to fallacies, warrants, and inductive and deductive logic).

Ethical Reasoning:

1. For both self and others, identify and explain explicit and implicit values, premises, beliefs, and/or ideologies.
2. Apply ethical theories to ethical questions and explain implications for multiple stakeholders.
3. Develop and justify an ethical position, while acknowledging limitations.

B1: Physical Science

1. Students demonstrate scientific content knowledge within the physical sciences and its relevance to their own lives.
2. Students demonstrate the application of quantitative skills (such as statistics, mathematics, and the interpretation of numerical graphical data) to physical science problems.
3. Students identify differences between science and other ways of constructing knowledge.

B2: Life Science

1. Students demonstrate scientific content knowledge within the life sciences and its relevance to their own lives.
2. Students demonstrate the application of quantitative skills (such as statistics, mathematics and the interpretation of numerical graphical data) to life science problems.
3. Students identify differences between science and other ways of constructing knowledge.
4. Students demonstrate an understanding of how the scientific peer review process contributes to the reliability of scientific knowledge.

B3: Laboratory Practices

1. Students demonstrate satisfactory laboratory and/or field methods to collect and evaluate data used in scientific inquiry.
2. Students apply standard scientific methods to critically evaluate evidence to address questions about the natural world and communicate their findings.
3. Students evaluate the credibility and scientific value of different sources of scientific information.
   1. Effectively search for and identify peer-reviewed articles on the topic.
   2. Select library databases appropriate to the topic. Identify and combine keywords and searches to develop a search strategy; effectively execute the search in appropriate library databases.
   3. Evaluate the credibility of information sources, using the following criteria: role of peer-review, quality of evidence, expertise and credentials, purpose and audience, point of view.

B4: Mathematics/Quantitative Reasoning

1. Students develop solutions to routine and non-routine problems using discipline-appropriate mathematical/quantitative methods.
2. Students assess and justify the reasonableness of solutions to mathematical/quantitative problems.
3. Students represent, interpret, and analyze mathematical/quantitative information in symbolic, visual, numerical, and verbal forms.
4. Students identify and evaluate the assumptions and limitations of mathematical/quantitative methods.
5. Students use appropriate reasoning and terminology to communicate mathematical/quantitative ideas, methods and conclusions.

Upper Division B: Scientific Inquiry & Quantitative Reasoning

In addition to the learning outcomes described in the above lower division B areas 1-4, at the upper division students shall also:

1. Synthesize and connect quantitative or scientific knowledge, reasoning, skills, and/or experiences across disciplines, allowing them to address new or complex situations relevant to their lives or careers.

C1: Arts

1. Identify the interrelationships between ideas and expression in works of art.
2. Identify the ways that diverse cultural identities and other social contexts influence the creation and experience of art works.
3. Identify areas of artistic engagement, critical analysis, and aesthetic choices through the study of historical, contemporary, and/or emerging examples of cinema, literature, dance, media arts, visual art, music, or theatre.
4. Describe the techniques that artists use to elicit emotional and intellectual responses in their audiences and viewers.
5. Identify a contextual and a critical understanding of the arts’ role in public, social, and institutional environments.
6. Describe a contextual and a critical understanding of the role of the arts in their lives.

C2: Humanities & Language

1. Describe significant questions about the human condition that emerge from multicultural and/or multilingual perspectives.
2. Interpret cultural expressions, including as responses to power and race within global and/or local social contexts.
3. Communicate emotional and personal responses to cultural works, practices, and/or perspectives.

Language:

1. Use a language other than English interpersonally and interpretively to communicate and present on familiar topics in daily situations.
2. Use a language other than English to identify and describe a different culture’s customs, practices, products, and perspectives on familiar topics.
3. Use a language other than English to compare and contrast the language and cultures studied and their own.

Non-Language:

1. Interpret emerging, contemporary, and/or enduring works of human imagination.
2. Reflect on significant questions about the human condition that emerge from multicultural and/or multilingual perspectives.
3. Examine cultural works within their global and/or local social contexts, exploring the ways in which questions of power impact a society’s cultural expressions.

Upper Division C: Integrated Humanities & Language

1. Analyze significant questions about the human condition that emerge from multicultural and/or multilingual perspectives.
2. Explain the way in which questions of power impact a society’s cultural and artistic expressions through the examination of language and/or cultural and artistic works within their global and/or local social contexts.
3. Communicate emotional and personal responses to cultural and artistic works.

In addition to the above, students will also be able to demonstrate the learning outcomes of the following upper division sub-areas:

Upper Division C1: Integrated Arts

1. Demonstrate an interpretive understanding of the interrelationships between ideas and expression in works of art.
2. Analyze and articulate how diverse cultural identities and other social contexts influence the creation and experience of works of art.
3. Implement ideas of artistic engagement, critical analysis, and aesthetic choices through the study of historical, contemporary, and/or emerging examples of cinema, literature, dance, media arts, visual art, music, or theatre.
4. Demonstrate an understanding and implementation of techniques that artists use to elicit emotional and intellectual responses in their audiences.
5. Demonstrate an interpretive, contextual, and critical understanding of the arts’ role in public, social, and institutional environments.
6. Demonstrate an interpretive, reflective, contextual, and critical understanding of the role of the arts in their lives.

Upper Division C2: Integrated Humanities

Language

1. Use a language other than English interpersonally and interpretively to communicate and present on a range of topics in diverse contexts in culturally appropriate ways.
2. Use a language other than English to identify, describe, and reflect about a different culture’s customs, practices, products, and perspectives on a range of topics.
3. Use a language other than English to explain and reflect on the nature of language and on the concept of culture through comparing and contrasting the language and cultures studies on their own.

Non-language

1. Analyze and interpret emerging, contemporary, and/or enduring works of the human imagination.
2. Reflect on significant questions about the human condition that emerge from multicultural and/or multilingual perspectives.
3. Examine cultural works within their global and/or local social contexts, understanding the ways in which questions of power impact a society’s cultural expressions.
4. Integrate and apply the insights and approaches gained from multiple disciplinary perspectives to the study of human experiences.

D: General Social Sciences

1. Basic Principles: Students identify and define major vocabulary, concepts, value systems, assumptions, theoretical perspectives, and ethical issues in a field of study or a discipline in the social sciences.
2. Contexts: Students demonstrate an understanding of one or more social issues across historical, cultural, geographical, economic, political, or institutional dimensions.
3. Global Competency: Students demonstrate awareness that one or more social issues or concepts vary across global contexts or that a social issue has global impacts.
4. Methodology: Students demonstrate an understanding of how a field of study or discipline applies a range of social scientific methods of inquiry to understand human behavior within established ethical and/or professional frameworks.

D: U.S. History

1. Historical Knowledge: Students identify and describe processes, diverse peoples, and events in the histories of what is now the United States nationally, regionally, and globally over a span of at least 100 years, including the study of culture, politics, economics, social movements, and/or geography.
2. Historical Thinking: Students read and understand appropriate secondary sources as well as critically evaluate, contextualize, and interpret relevant primary historical sources.
3. Historical Research Methods: Students become their own historians by posing appropriate and researchable questions, gathering information, selecting relevant evidence from the information gathered, and critically evaluating its credibility.
4. Historical Writing: Students interpret and integrate the 3 outcomes identified above in well-written essays and additionally (if appropriate), in another form, such as a multimedia presentation, website, or other digital platform.
5. Information Literacy: Students develop a strategy to conduct scholarly research on a historical topic or question. Students utilize appropriate library databases, identify relevant and credible sources, and demonstrate an understanding of the distinctions between primary historical evidence and secondary historical sources.

D: Civics & Lower Division Service Learning

Civic Identities

1. Examine one’s personal, social, and political identities in relationship to social and cultural contexts, particularly multiple civic institutions and communities.
2. Examine and demonstrate how one’s identities connect with systems of power, privilege, and marginality.

Civic Knowledge

1. Describe and critically examine the political philosophies informing debates around the creation of the U.S. Constitution, including the amendment process, within the context of systems of inequity (e.g., racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism).
2. Critically examine the origins and changing parameters of the California constitution.
3. Describe the rights and obligations of citizenship in relationship to the forms of government at the local, state, and national levels (e.g., what rights are defined in both the CA and national constitutions).
4. Describe the local community history, assets, strengths, and dynamics and identify structural causes of local social issues and responses.

Civic Action

1. Demonstrate ethical service to community informed by reciprocity, cultural humility, and intercultural competence.
2. Demonstrate ability to use tools of social/political action in an informed civic advocacy activity/assignment.

Upper Division D: Integrated Social Sciences

1. Application of Basic Principles: Students apply social scientific vocabulary, concepts, and theoretical perspectives to social issues as appropriate to the discipline.
2. Analysis: Students analyze one or more social issues using basic principles of the discipline.
3. Research: Students formulate research questions, identify appropriate methods to answer questions, and conduct research on a social issue using appropriate disciplinary methodology.
4. Personal and Professional Responsibility:
   1. Students examine how their identities, experiences, contexts, and perspectives relate to one or more social issues and/or disciplinary specific methodologies.
   2. Students examine ethical issues and apply professional codes of ethics within the discipline to social issues and/or disciplinary methodologies.

E: Lifelong Learning & Self-Development

1. Students express knowledge of evidence-based health and self-development theories and practices and critically examine information about them.
2. Students identify pathways for optimal health and self-development including examination of benefits and risks about personal behavior choices across the lifespan.
3. Students apply principles and behavior that promote lifelong, optimal personal health and self-development.
4. Students relate concepts and theories to socially responsible and culturally sensitive practices to promote health and self-development.

F: Ethnic Studies

1. Analyze and articulate concepts such as race and racism, racialization, ethnicity, equity, ethno-centrism, eurocentrism, white supremacy, self-determination, liberation, decolonization, sovereignty, imperialism, settler colonialism, and anti-racism as analyzed in any one or more of the following: Native American Studies, African American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Latina and Latino American Studies.

2. Apply theory and knowledge produced by Native American, African American, Asian American, and/or Latina and Latino American communities to describe the critical events, histories, cultures, intellectual traditions, contributions, lived-experiences and social struggles of those groups with a particular emphasis on agency and group-affirmation.

3. Critically analyze the intersection of race and racism as they relate to class, gender, sexuality, religion, spirituality, national origin, immigration status, ability, tribal citizenship, sovereignty, language, and/or age in Native American, African American, Asian American, and/or Latina and Latino American communities.

4. Critically review how struggle, resistance, racial and social justice, solidarity, and liberation, as experienced and enacted by Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and/or Latina and Latino Americans are relevant to current and structural issues such as communal, national, international, and transnational politics as, for example, in immigration, reparations, settler-colonialism, multiculturalism, language policies.

5. Describe and actively engage with anti-racist and anti-colonial issues and the practices and movements in Native American, African American, Asian American and/or Latina and Latino communities and a just and equitable society.

University Requirements Learning Outcomes

First Year Seminar

1. Describe how the CSUMB Founding Vision Statement, Core Values, and Academic Goals may contribute to their own educational and personal goals.
2. Develop an academic plan that incorporates exploration of major and career, and student development pathways.
3. Collaborate through constructive, ethical participation in team tasks and effective interactions with team members of diverse identities and perspectives.
4. Select and employ appropriate metacognitive strategies in order to monitor and improve their own comprehension of texts, solve problems, and/or evaluate their progress toward completion of tasks.

Graduate Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR)

Reading

1. Adapt strategies for reading according to disciplinary purpose and context.
2. Read to comprehend, analyze, and evaluate disciplinary texts.

Writing

1. Adapt strategies for drafting, collaborating, and revising according to disciplinary purpose and context.
2. Adapt content and style to audience, purpose, and context.
3. Select and apply appropriate disciplinary genre conventions for content, development, structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics.
4. Choose and use sources according to appropriate disciplinary criteria.

Upper Division Service Learning (UDSL)

1. to be determined soon

World Culture and Language (WCL)

1. Identify and describe cultural practices, products, and perspectives on a range of topics related to the target language.
2. Compare and contrast different cultural perspectives and practices in order to connect with local, regional, and/or global communities and reflect on the nature of language and the concept of culture.
3. Use a non-English language to communicate at basic levels in culturally appropriate ways.