Academic Catalog

2024-2025

The General Education Program

The General Education requirements ensure that students develop core liberal arts competencies and encounter a broad range of liberal arts inquiries — social, scientific, humanistic, and artistic — embraced by the Denison University faculty. In addition, the requirements expose students to a diversity of perspectives that enable them to interact more effectively in an increasingly interdependent world. Thus, the General Education program seeks to accomplish three goals:

  1. development of competencies,
  2. exposure to a broad variety of disciplines and,
  3. development of a global perspective.

General Education: Summary of Requirements

  • One W 101 - First-Year Writing Workshop (First Year writing intensive workshop)
  • Two courses from the Fine Arts
  • Two courses from the Sciences (one fulfilling a lab requirement)
  • Two courses from the Social Sciences
  • Two courses from the Humanities
  • One interdivisional course from one of the following areas: Black Studies, Data Analytics, East Asian Studies, Environmental Studies, Global Health, International Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Middle East and North African Studies, Queer Studies, and Women's and Gender Studies.
  • Foreign Language

​At a minimum, all students must complete an elementary year of Foreign Language 111-112 at the college level. Students who have studied a language in high school and who wish to continue study of that language at Denison in order to fulfill this requirement will, however, be expected to complete the third semester of that language (i.e., to pass or demonstrate proficiency in the language at the 211 level). All entering students who have studied a foreign language in high school must take the appropriate placement test during the orientation period. Language courses 111, 112, and 211 will not count toward the divisional distribution requirements, except for Latin and Greek 211, which may count toward the Humanities requirement unless used to satisfy the Foreign Language requirement.

NOTE: Only one course from a single department may be used to fulfill the divisional requirements.

Five of these general education courses (or other courses) must fulfill these competencies:

  • One power and justice requirement
  • One quantitative reasoning requirement
  • One oral communication requirement
  • Two writing intensive course requirements following the completion of the W101 Writing Workshop (one of which must be completed by the end of the sophomore year)