Program Requirements

Essential Education program requirements for First-Year Experience, Essential Education Experience, and Activities for Well-being and Success.

First-Year Experience Requirements

The First-Year Experience focuses on preparing students for success in their collegiate endeavors while also engaging them in their chosen academic major. Courses recommended for the first year include the following.

• Michigan Tech Seminar
• Math
• Natural and Physical Science
• STEM
• Composition
• Foundations of the Human World

Michigan Tech Seminar

Required: 1 credit

This requirement is designed to help students explore their interests and map out their path through college, to develop the habits and mindsets of successful students, and to build a sense of community and belonging at Michigan Tech. Seminar courses are primarily offered by academic units and will incorporate a shared set of common modules, equating to roughly one-third of a 1-credit course, with the rest of the course content determined by the department. University-wide (UN 1013) and transfer student specific (UN 2013) courses will be offered to first-year students where their academic units do not have a seminar course offering, ensuring all incoming first-year students engage in a seminar course. These courses are currently being developed and will be available in fall 2025.

Math

Required: 3 credits minimum

This list includes introductory math courses.

Natural and Physical Science

Required: 3 credits minimum

This list includes introductory natural and physical science courses from a variety of disciplines. A lab course is not specifically required.

STEM

Required: 3 credits minimum

This list includes all courses from the Math list and the Natural and Physical Science list, as well as other courses from science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines.

Composition

Required: 3 credits

Foundations of the Human World

Required: 3 credits

The Foundations of the Human World requirement gives students a choice between several courses. These courses are gateways to the disciplines that comprise SHAPE: Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy/Environment. They are offered by the Departments of Social Sciences, Humanities, Visual and Performing Arts, Psychology and Human Factors, as well as the College of Business and College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science.

Essential Education Experience Requirements

Essential Education Experiences (E3s) are upper-division courses meant to help prepare our students for an ever-changing, dynamic, and diverse world. An E3 is a 3-credit course that increases social awareness, global understandings, and/or cultural competencies through hands-on learning. The goal of an E3 is for students to move beyond their own viewpoint and learn from multiple perspectives, applying their Essential Abilities toward a project or activity that engages with a community in a meaningful way.

Students have three different options for meeting the Essential Education Experience requirement:

1. Courses from SHAPE* disciplines with a significant civic engagement or service learning component.
2. Planned student experiences, such as some faculty-led study away programs.
3. A curricular course that leverages the student's extracurricular experiences, leadership roles, or other philanthropic activities. The course provides a curricular framework in developing cultural competency and skill in community-based collaborations to support the student-driven experience. Student projects will need to be pre-approved for these courses to ensure they meet E3 requirements.

* SHAPE: Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts for People and the Environment/Economy 

The Essential Education Experience is intended as a culminating or near-culminating curricular element, requiring that students first complete at least three requirements in the Pathway. Students will reflect on how they are using the Essential Abilities they have developed throughout their Essential Education program engagement, providing students practice in using these transferable skills successfully in widely diverse situations and settings.

Essential Education Experience Courses

Required: 3 credits

Activities For Well-being and Success

Activities for Well-being and Success courses are worth 0.5 or 1 credit, and grades are not counted toward a student’s overall GPA. A total of 3 credits must be successfully completed to meet Essential Education requirements.

Under the Essential Education program, Activities for Well-being and Success courses expand beyond physical education and consist of four categories:

• Physical Well-being: Activities that focus on improving physical health, whether individual or on a team.
  Well-being factors promoted: physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and behavioral
• Creative Expression: Activities that focus on making, creating, or expressing as an act of creativity.
  Well-being factors promoted: emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social, and behavioral
• Mental/Emotional Well-being: Activities that directly address and focus on mental, emotional, spiritual, social, and behavioral well-being.
  Well-being factors promoted: emotional, spiritual, social, and behavioral
• Success: Activities that focus on leadership, as well as student and career success.
  Well-being factors promoted: emotional, intellectual, social, occupational, and behavioral

Activities for Well-being and Success Courses

Required: 3 credits minimum

Students may take any combination of courses on the Activities for Well-being and Success course list to satisfy the 3-credit requirement; there is no need to take courses from each of the above categories.