Meaning and Purpose of General Education
The GE experience asks that students and faculty in our inclusive polytechnic community engage a breadth of subjects to encourage intellectual flexibility, empathy, creativity, curiosity, and rigor. The learning that takes place in GE supplements and complements the academic major. GE brings together diverse ways of knowing and doing to strengthen foundational skills, drive innovation, and adapt to new opportunities. Furthermore, it enables us to develop a deep understanding of one’s self and respect for the complex identities of others, and to face the critical and ethical decisions we encounter throughout our lives.
General Education Unit Distribution
Beginning fall 2025 all undergraduate students at Cal Poly Pomona must satisfy the general education requirements with a minimum and a maximum of 43 semester units, including 9 units of upper division coursework.
1A: ENGLISH COMPOSITION (3 semester units)
1B: CRITICAL THINKING (3 semester units)
1C: ORAL COMMUNICATION (3 semester units)
AREA 3 - ARTS AND HUMANITIES: 9 units
3A: ARTS (3 semester units)
3B: HUMANITIES (3 semester units)
3C. UPPER DIVISION ARTS OR HUMANITIES (3 upper-division semester units)
AREA 4 - SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES: 9 units
4A. SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES (3 semester units)
4B. SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - AMERICAN AND CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT (3 semester units)
4C. UPPER DIVISION SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES (3 upper-division semester units)
AREA 5 - PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES: 10 units (One of the two lower-division courses must be associated with a 1 semester unit laboratory. 10 semester units)
5A: PHYSICAL SCIENCE (3 semester units)
5B: BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE (3 semester units)
5C: LABORATORY (1 semester unit)
5D. UPPER DIVISION SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY OR QUANTITATIVE REASONING (3 upper-division semester units)
AREA 6 - ETHNIC STUDIES: 3 units
General Education Student Learning Outcomes
- Oral Communication: Students will express their ideas through acts of speech with an awareness of audience, purpose, and context.
- Written Communication: Students will express their ideas through the written word with an awareness of audience, purpose, and form.
- Critical Thinking: Students will engage in the logical process of inquiry to analyze information from multiple perspectives to develop reasoned arguments.
- Quantitative Literacy: Students will use quantitative information to draw inferences and communicate informed arguments.
- Information Literacy: Students will responsibly identify, locate, and critically evaluate the array of information sources and voices necessary to engage in sound inquiry.
- Civic Literacy: Students will apply civic knowledge, associated with historical structures of power, to self-discovery and responsibility to the community.
- Intercultural Engagement: Students will integrate knowledge and relationships reflective of the diversity of human experience and forms of expression.
GE Policies
- Course Approval: Courses are approved by the Campus Academic Senate by area to meet the university general education program requirements. The framework, guidelines, and coursework approved to meet general education requirements may change subsequent to the publication of this catalog. Students who change majors or otherwise have a break in status may find that they are subject to new degree requirements. Careful academic and career planning is essential. Special Topics courses (those numbered 4990) are not eligible for GE credit.
- Minimum Grades in General Education: Effective for new and returning students admitted Fall 2025 or later, a grade of C- or better is required of Cal Poly Pomona or transfer student completing courses in English Composition (Area 1A), Critical Thinking (Area 1B), Oral Communication (Area 1C) and Mathematical Concepts and Quantitative Reasoning (Area 2).
- Upper Division Requirement: Students must complete a minimum of nine semester units of upper division general education which may be taken no sooner than the semester in which the student achieves upper division status.
- Residency Requirement: Nine semester units of the total general education program must be completed in residence at Cal Poly Pomona.
- Sequences: Courses listed as a sequence should be taken in order. For example, in the sequence MAT 1140 - MAT 1150 , MAT 1140 should be completed before taking MAT 1150 . Each course in the sequence counts as one course toward meeting general education requirements.
Transfer Students and GE Certification
Community college transfer students should be aware that many courses on the Cal Poly Pomona General Education list are also major department entrance or prerequisite requirements and will still have to be taken to meet degree requirements. Therefore, even if they may be certified by their community colleges as having met all (or most) CSU lower division general education requirements, or have met GE requirements prior to change of major, they may need to take additional courses to satisfy prerequisites for the major. For example, students may have met the quantitative reasoning requirement by taking a trigonometry course at the community college, or at Cal Poly Pomona, and be so certified. This will not meet the calculus requirement for engineering, which also meets the Cal Poly Pomona GE quantitative reasoning requirement. Calculus will still have to be taken. Such “excess” coursework will be given as “elective credit.” Some transfer students without a complete GE certification may be partially certified by their community colleges as having met the CSU General Education quantitative reasoning requirement with coursework which does not meet the Cal Poly Pomona Mathematics proficiency requirement. Such students will also have to take coursework to meet this graduation requirement.
Transfer students may satisfy CSU lower division General Education requirements through certification of courses that satisfy the CSU General Education-Breadth Requirements or the California General Education Transfer Curriculum (CalGETC). Contact your community college counselor for more details.
Policy
In 2.2.5a EO 1100 says that a university may waive one or more of the requirements of Title 5 and that the university must have a clearly stated policy regarding such waivers.
Questions related to general education requirements should be directed to the Office of Academic Programs and the Faculty Director of Undergraduate Studies and General Education, Building 121.
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