The Dialogues is a unique academic experience designed to build life skills that enrich your professional life as well as your personal life. Having a diverse intellectual skillset allows you to successfully navigate different challenges as they emerge.
Communication skills are essential for every field of endeavor. Students focus intensively on communication skills in specially designated courses to fulfill the Communication Skills Perspective, and will continue to practice these skills in Writing- and Speaking-Enhanced courses and experiences. Through the completion of the Communication Skills Perspective, students will:
Students must complete nine credits from the list of courses approved for the Communications Skills Perspective. Included in these nine credits must be ENG 190: Writing As Critical Thinking (or a successful portfolio challenge), COMM 170 or any other COMM course that meets the CORE 42 state requirement, and a writing-enhanced (WE) course. Additional coursework to fulfill the nine-credit minimum (if needed) may come from the list of courses approved as either WE or speaking-enhanced (SE). A student can use a single course to fulfill both the SE and WE requirements.
A liberally educated person strives to understand the diversities and complexities of the cultural and social world, past and present, and come to an informed sense of themselves and the world around them. This perspective highlights the content and the processes used by historians and social and behavioral scientists to discover, describe, analyze, and predict human behavior and social systems. Through the completion of the Social Perspective, students will:
Students must complete nine credits from at least two departments (prefixes) from the list of courses approved for the Social Perspective. Included in these nine credits must be a course that fulfills the Missouri Statute requirement (170.011.1).
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (also known as STEM fields) are an essential basis of our modern society. New advances in these fields continually change how and what we do in our daily lives and how we perceive the universe and our place in it. The STEM Perspective provides experiences and knowledge to students so that they may better understand the important role STEM has played in producing the culture and lifestyle they currently have and to navigate the changes due to new discoveries and new technologies.
Through the completion of the STEM Perspective, students will:
Students must complete ten credits from the list of courses approved for the STEM Perspective. Included in these ten credits must be a mathematics course, a science course with an associated laboratory, and a third course of at least three credits. If the third course is a mathematics course, it must be a STEM Perspective course numbered MATH 190 or higher.
Liberally educated individuals aspire to lead meaningful lives that embrace the practice of democratic citizenship. Through performance, analysis, and self-reflection, exploration of artistic and humanistic creation prepares students to adopt habits of lifelong learning that foster the pursuit of these goals. Through the completion of the Arts and Humanities Perspective, students will:
Students must complete nine credits from at least two departments (prefixes) from the list of courses approved for the Arts and Humanities Perspective.
A liberally educated person is capable of being both a consumer and a producer of statistical information with some basic level of competency. Students should be able to critically evaluate information in their professional and personal life (consumer) and to draw meaningful conclusions from data using basic statistical tools (producer). Through the completion of the Statistics requirement, students will:
As part of the First-Year Experience at Truman, students will complete the First-Year Seminar (FYS), choosing from a selection of unique courses designed exclusively for incoming students. The courses are designed and taught by professors from across campus. FYS inspires students to engage the big questions, cultivate intellectual and practical values, collaborate with peers and professor, and foster character as they become grounded in the methods of critical, interdisciplinary, and intercultural thinking.
The First-Year Seminar is designed to:
(Cognition)
(Process)
(Product)
Interdisciplinary study offers a model of how connections can be made. It exposes students to multiple ways of thinking about issues, problems, and concepts. It enables the simultaneous use of multiple modes of inquiry and demonstrate that their source of power is synergistic rather than additive. It helps students construct their own mental frameworks of retrievable knowledge. And it makes possible an evaluation of competing and complementary ways of knowing.
Upon completion of the Interdisciplinary, Writing-Enhanced Junior Seminar, students have engaged:
and have demonstrated:
Coursework and study abroad experiences can foster a student’s intercultural perspective, as can service learning, internships, and other intensive experiences designed to create an environment for intercultural interaction.
Students completing the Intercultural Perspective requirement:
Students who complete the Dialogues elementary foreign language proficiency requirement:
For more information on the Dialogues Curriculum, visit the .