Undergraduate Core Curriculum Redesign - Core Area Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcome Final Draft - Updated 4/28/2026

Learning Outcomes Feedback Form

Golden Gateway Initial Year Experience

ENDURING QUESTIONS

Articulate Enduring Questions. Articulate and respond to enduring questions about human existence, meaning, and belief through the analysis of primary texts and other meaningful forms of human expression, considered in their historical and cultural contexts.
Analysis and Interpretation. Interpret and analyze how enduring questions are explored within a particular tradition, discipline, or form.
Engage Diverse Perspectives. Engage respectfully and critically with other perspectives across religions, cultures, time periods, and communities.
Reflection and Application. Reflect on significant themes from the course such as faith, justice, wisdom, responsibility, community, and human dignity and begin to apply them to one’s own sense of meaning, purpose, and guiding values.

CITY AS CLASSROOM

Explore SF/Bay Area. Explore the social, cultural, civic, or environmental dimensions of the SF/Bay Area. - maps to Learning Goal 3
Integrate Theory & Practice. Synthesize local observations with scholarly and community-based sources to analyze complex issues and construct evidence-based interpretations or arguments. - maps to Core Learning Goal 3
Consider Ethics. Guided by the Jesuit value of cura personalis—care for the whole person— apply ethical reasoning to locally relevant issues, considering multiple perspectives and community impacts. - maps to Core Learning Goal 4
Create & Innovate. Design an independent or collaborative project that applies fieldwork, research, or creative methods to investigate or reimagine a real-world phenomenon situated within the SF/Bay Area, and communicate findings to a relevant audience. - maps to Core Learning Goal 5
Reflect. Reflect critically on your own background, assumptions, and evolving relationship to the SF/Bay Area and its communities, considering how your perspective shapes what you observe, what you question, and what you come to understand. - maps to Core Learning Goal 3

COMMUNICATION FOR THE COMMON GOOD

Analyze how language, power, and identity intersect. Analyze how communication and media reflect and shape cultural values, social roles, and power dynamics. (Learning Goal: Global and local citizenship)
Communicate with purpose. Guided by the Jesuit value of eloquentia perfecta—speaking and writing for the common good— apply communication principles to craft and deliver intentional messages in multiple modalities (oral, written, multimedia). (Learning goal: Communication and collaborative engagement)
Critically evaluate sources. Critically evaluate and synthesize information from scholarly, popular, and AI-generated sources while demonstrating ethical, transparent, and responsible use of technology. (Learning goal: critical inquiry, reflection, and ethics)
Reflect on your own communication choices. Articulate how your positionality and relationship to power impact your production and interpretation of messages. (Learning goal: critical inquiry, reflection, and ethics)

BRIDGE TO EXPLORATION

CREATIVE EXPRESSIONS

Creative Practice and Human Expression. Students will conceive, create, and present original artistic work or arts-based research that integrates intellectual inquiry, technical skill, and ingenuity through visual, written, performed, or other devised forms.
Historical and Formal Analysis. Students will analyze works of art and creative practices—both their own and others'—in historical or formal contexts using appropriate methods and sources, engaging questions of aesthetics and cultural meaning.
Social and Ethical Contexts. Students will engage creative processes and works through an ethical lens, examining questions of power, human values, representation, and justice through diverse perspectives or frameworks of interpretation.
Imagination, Curiosity, and Risk-Taking. Students will practice cultivating imagination as a mode of inquiry, demonstrating intellectual curiosity, openness to ambiguity, and a willingness to take creative risks through exploratory or iterative creative processes.
Critical Reflection and Collective Responsibility. Students will critically reflect on their creative and analytical work, articulating how their ideas, choices, and processes individually or as part of a group connect to their values, intellectual development, and responsibilities to others.

GLOBAL AND LOCAL SOCIETY

Theoretical Frameworks and Context. Apply theories or theoretical frameworks to analyze human behavior, social and political organization, and institutions in local and global contexts.
Analysis and Methods. Evaluate empirical evidence — quantitative or qualitative — by applying diverse research designs and evidence-based methods to analyze relevant issues (e.g., social, political, economic, environmental, and technological), distinguishing between description, interpretation, and critique.
Local and Global Interconnections. Analyze how local and global conditions, processes, or forces shape and are shaped by the behaviors, experiences, and practices of diverse groups, cultures, and places.
Individual, Social, and Ethical Dimensions. Explain how systems of power, inequality, and injustice shape individual and collective human experience and outcomes, and apply ethical reasoning to evaluate possible responses.
Cultural Awareness and Global Citizenship. Demonstrate intercultural understanding and communication skills when engaging with diverse communities and perspectives across local and global contexts.

THEOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL INQUIRY

Critical Reasoning and Evaluation. Explain and critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of foundational ethical theories or theological frameworks - for instance, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Consequentialism, Deontology, Virtue Ethics.
Foundational Theories and Frameworks. Apply foundational ethical theories or theological frameworks to contemporary humanistic, social, or moral questions, constructing and defending well-reasoned responses.
Religious and Philosophical Sources of Meaning. Investigate and compare diverse ways that individuals and communities make and discover meaning through philosophical, theological, or religious sources.
Dialogue and Communication Across Difference. Communicate clear, well-structured arguments, orally and in writing, about religious, theological, or ethical issues.
Discernment and Self-Awareness. Discern and analyze their own religious, theological, or ethical commitments and how these commitments relate to a broad range of human experiences.

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL INQUIRY

Close Reading in Context. Students will carefully examine primary and secondary sources, including historical documents, visual materials, literary texts, films, performances, or other media, and analyze their meaning, production, and reception within their historical and cultural contexts.
Ways of Knowing in History, Literature, and the Arts. Students will use established historical, literary, or arts-based methods of analysis to identify and contextualize sources and to analyze how their production and reception are shaped by underlying assumptions, interpretive frameworks, and differing points of view.
History, Power, and Difference. Students will examine how historical processes and power structures, including race, gender, class, sexuality, religion, empire, colonization, war, or migration, have shaped human experiences and cultural expression across time and place.
Critical Reasoning and Evidence-Based Argumentation. Students will develop and communicate sustained, well-structured, evidence-based arguments that engage multiple perspectives and, where appropriate, competing interpretations, demonstrating precision in reasoning, critical awareness of the interpretive frameworks and assumptions that shape their claims, and clear, consistent citation practices.
Contemporary Relevance and Application. Students will investigate how interpretations of the past and of cultural texts relate to contemporary ethical, social, and political questions.

SCIENTIFIC LITERACY

Scientific Inquiry. Investigate natural phenomena through empirical methods including observation, hypothesis, and experimentation, understanding how scientific knowledge is generated, tested, and revised.
Scientific Reasoning. Analyze and interpret quantitative and qualitative data, distinguishing evidence from inference, to evaluate uncertainty and bias. Integrate computational tools with critical human judgement to make evidence-based decisions.
Scientific Explanation. Utilize conceptual, mathematical, and computational models to explain natural phenomena, assess their limitations, and apply them to new problems.
Scientific Ethics and Social Responsibility. Apply scientific knowledge to societal issues, evaluating ethical considerations and the responsibility to apply scientific tools for the common good.

QUANTITATIVE AND COMPUTATIONAL LITERACY

Quantitative Inquiry. Investigate questions using mathematical or computational methods, including questions about mathematical structures and real-world systems.
Quantitative Modeling. Translate problems into quantitative form by identifying key variables, relationships, and assumptions, and use models to analyze patterns, make predictions, and understand complex systems.
Quantitative Reasoning. Interpret and evaluate numerical and statistical information, distinguishing between data, assumptions, and conclusions. Assess uncertainty and limitations, and evaluate competing claims.
Structured Reasoning. Use algorithms, procedures, and simulation to explore problems and analyze systems. Decompose complex tasks into logical steps and apply systematic methods to make predictions and solve problems in new and unfamiliar situations.
Data, Ethics, and Society. Analyze how data and computational systems are used and deployed, assess their effects on individuals and institutions, and evaluate ethical considerations such as bias, privacy, and responsibility in their use.