The Office of Undergraduate Education offers undergraduate students the opportunity to discover their intellectual, creative and professional passions by introducing them to many interconnected areas of knowledge.  Through the services we offer and/or coordinate such as freshmen core, AI literacy and Husky Success Quest seminars, Undergraduate Majors and Minors Fairs, student testing services our office strives to support all undergraduates as they participate in a comprehensive undergraduate experience.

 

Undergraduate Education Initiatives

Core Learning Community

The Core Learning Community introduces first-year students to the excitement and challenges of post-secondary education through a series of theme-based courses organized around the Core "Areas of Inquiry."

Throughout their Core experience, students will work collaboratively with their peers and UW Tacoma faculty while gaining familiarity with the skills required to succeed across the curriculum. In pursuit of this goal, all Core courses are designed to cultivate and refine our campus-wide learning goals, which include communication and self-expression; civic engagement; critical inquiry; global understanding; cultural competence; and problem solving.

Undergraduate Major & Minors Fair

At the event, students will have the opportunity to discover majors, minors, and certificates available in each program, explore areas of interest, and connect with academic advisors and faculty from different majors. They can explore our website at https://www.tacoma.uw.edu/ue/majors-and-minors-exploration-uw-tacoma

Undergraduate Student Showcase

Each quarter, OUE sponsors a student showcase that provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to present their quarterly projects to the UW Tacoma campus community. It also provides an open forum for students to discuss their work and connect with faculty and peers from across the curriculum.

Testing

The Office of Undergraduate Education provides Math placement, Spanish placement and Proficiency testing and makeup tests for individual students upon faculty requests.

Undergraduate Education Academic Council

The Undergraduate Education Academic Council (UEAC) oversees curriculum issues pertaining to undergraduate education and plays an important role in elevating the profile and quality of the undergraduate academic experience at UW Tacoma.

Learning Community

Core courses are designed to prepare first-year students for success both in college and beyond. The challenges we face today are complex, and they require educated citizens capable of understanding issues from multiple perspectives. Consequently, many Core courses adopt an interdisciplinary approach to their particular field of study.

In their first year, Core students meet many of their general education graduation requirements in classes with a student-to-faculty ratio of 25 to 1. Discussion, lectures, reading, writing, and project assignments are designed to broaden students' perspectives--not only about what they are studying, but also about how what they are learning resonates within the world in which they live.

Having sampled the scope of UW Tacoma's curricular offerings through their Core experience, first-year students are better prepared to select courses each quarter from a range of electives that will allow them to explore and prepare for potential majors.

Learning Objectives

While the faculty that teach Core curriculum courses come from a variety of academic programs on campus, they teach to a common set of student learning objectives with a developmental approach that emphasizes the foundational skills necessary to succeed in college courses. Faculty collaborate in the Core Learning Community to design and teach classes that build on these objectives while introducing students to academic writing, the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.

As the foundation of a student’s academic career at UW Tacoma, Core strives to foster the following learning objectives:

Inquiry and Critical Thinking
  • Inquiry and problem solving: collect, evaluate, and analyze information and resources to solve problems or answer questions.
  • Research methods & application: approach complex issues by taking a large question and breaking it down into manageable pieces.
  • Synthesis & context: make meaningful connections among assignments and readings in order to develop a sense of the ‘big picture.’
Communication/Self-Expression
  • Argumentation: formulate an original thesis-driven argument and sustain it in both written and verbal communication.
  • Analysis: identify, analyze, and summarize/represent the key elements of a text.
  • Disciplinary awareness: enter/place themselves into an existing dialogue (intellectual, political, etc.).
  • Expression of ideas: express ideas clearly in writing and speaking in order to synthesize and evaluate information before presenting it.

 

Global Perspective/Diversity/Civic Engagement
  • Disciplinary perspective: understand events and processes as ‘disciplinarily’ situated.
  • Global perspective: interact with concepts, ideas, and processes related to the interdependences between personal, local, and global relationships.
  • Diversity: think outside of cultural norms and values, including their own perspectives, to critically engage the larger world.
  • Civic engagement: interact with concepts, ideas, and processes related to civic engagement.

 

Quantitative Literacy
  • Use quantitative evidence (including statistics, graphs, etc.) in support of an argument.
  • Analyze and evaluate a chart or graph and interpret it (through discussion, a written assignment, etc.).
  • Find quantitative data to support an argument.

 

Sample Course Descriptions

Below are sample course descriptions. Core courses change based on the faculty teaching each quarter. For information on Core courses currently being offered, check our website at https://www.tacoma.uw.edu/ue/first-year-curriculum-courses or the online Time Schedule.

T CORE 101 Introduction to Academic Writing (C)
Title: Mapping the Academic Dis(Course)
Description: This course will discuss how academic writing is a conversation, or discourse, that students can navigate throughout their college career. The individual composition classroom is just one contact zone within the discipline of academic writing, and it is a valuable site for conversations that produce knowledge that benefits students and their own communities by linking them to discourses of power, institutions, and ideologies beyond themselves. Though the current trends of composition move with the ebbs and flows of ideologies and the increasing demands of higher education and society, these mappings of shared goals and expectations are interconnected spaces that are sites of sharing and exchange. Students can extend towards different rhetorical situations, connecting spaces and allowing communication among them. From a centered position, those within this sea of contact zones can affirm their place, communicate their position, and remap composition (dis)course.

T CORE 102 Introduction to Science (NSc)
Title: 50 Shades of Green: Exploring the diverse ecosystems and natural resources of Washington state
Description: This class serves as an introduction to the natural history of Washington state. Each week we will explore a new ecosystem found in Washington, from mountains to sea. We will learn about the climate, geology, ecology and wildlife that make each of these ecosystems unique. This class will use scientific inquiry-based activities in the field to help us observe and explain patterns found in nature.

T CORE 103 Introduction to Social Sciences (SSc)
Title: Food Justice: Human Rights, Food systems, and Food Banks
Description: Explores food insecurity, food sovereignty distribution of resources, and human rights. Examines the root causes of food insecurity such as poverty, food systems, racial and social inequity. Investigates best practices of food banks, urban farming and examples of food sovereignty and advocacy in different communities

T CORE 104 Introduction to Humanities (A&H)
Title: AI Know What You Did Last Summer: Finding Your Way (and Your Career) in the Panopticon
Description: AI can't taste pancakes, it can't walk in the snow, and it doesn't know what it's like to be cuddled by a cat. But it does *imitate* life... really well. So well that it has completely changed how we work, learn, make (and keep) our close relationships, apply for jobs, and think. This broad course introduces you to the ways that philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and other folks are grappling with AI's growing role in our lived experiences. What can it actually do that is good for us? Bad for us? Who benefits, and who's left behind? What does it mean for your future career, your privacy, and your sense of what's real? Through readings, discussions, and exploration through weekly personalized “AI labs,” you are invited to develop the critical thinking tools to navigate a world where the machines are watching, the algorithms are working, and our biggest questions (about our future) are on the horizon.