College of Southern Maryland
8730 Mitchell Road
PO Box 910
La Plata, MD 20646-0910
All degree programs of study at the college are comprised of both discipline-specific and general education courses.
The discipline-specific courses are designed to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for proficiency in their chosen program of study or major.
The General Education courses, on the other hand, set the foundation of a higher education curriculum and provide a coherent intellectual experience for all students, regardless of their program of study. These courses will range from 20 to 36 credits, depending on the degree selected. Whatever the number, they will be selected from the same list of courses, which are grouped below under the following headings: Arts; Humanities; English Composition; Social/Behavioral Sciences; Mathematics; Biological Sciences; Physical Sciences; and Interdisciplinary/Emerging Issues.
This course distribution is intended to ensure that students have mastered fundamental skills and have demonstrated a familiarity with a core knowledge considered basic to all college-level work.
These general education course credits are transferable to all two- and four-year public institutions (and many private institutions as well) in Maryland and are guaranteed so in Student Transfer Policies (contained in Appendix III of this catalog).
According to the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC), a general education program is designed to introduce undergraduates to the fundamental knowledge, skills, and values that are essential to the study of academic disciplines, to the pursuit of life-long learning, and to the development of educated members of the community and the world.
For students enrolling in an Associate of Arts (AA) or Associate of Science (AS) program, the general education portion of the program constitutes at least 30 to 36 credits in the following distribution:
Credits English Composition 3 Arts/Humanities 6 (from 2 different disciplines) Biological/Physical Sciences1 7 (including 1 lab) Social/Behavior Sciences 6 (from 2 different disciplines) Mathematics 3 Electives 3 - 11 (from above categories and/or Interdisciplinary/Emerging Issues)
Biological /Physical Sciences1: four credits must include a lecture with a corresponding lab (Some transfer institutions require students to take one science from biology and one from physical sciences.)
For students enrolling in an Associate of Applied Science (AAS) program, the general education portion of the program constitutes at least 20 credits in the following distribution:
Credits English Composition 3 Arts/Humanities 3 Biological/Physical Sciences 3 - 4 Social/Behavior Sciences 3 Mathematics 3 Electives 5 (from above categories and/or Interdisciplinary/Emerging Issues)