ALHOSN University Catalogue Global Knowledge with Local Vision ...

UNIVERSITY GENERAL REQUIREMENTS
The degree programs at ALHOSN University are designed to provide students with both a specialized
and a liberal education. Through a specialized education, students obtain depth of knowledge in an
academic discipline and perhaps in a career area. Through a liberal education, students develop a basis
and a context both for their specialized studies and for their lives within and beyond the university.
The following statement concerns itself with the liberal education or what is often called the general
education component of the degree programs at ALHOSN University.
General education is enabling education, providing students with the fundamental academic and life
skills. At its best, general education enables students to develop academic skills; acquire liberal
knowledge; shape individual values; and apply all three (skills, knowledge, and values) in their
academic, professional, personal, and societal lives. General studies programs are typically called
upon to provide students with instruction in these areas. At ALHOSN University, the general education
program is committed to this same mission.
The general education program includes the language skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listing in
both English and Arabic; thinking skills; mathematical and statistical skills; information technology
skills and research skills. They make it possible for students to acquire and create knowledge, and
consequently, they enable students to assess existing values and to develop new ones. Academic skills
are, moreover, the vehicles for critical analysis and synthesis of ideas and attitudes. They are, in fact,
the primary means of communication. The liberal knowledge component of the general education
program concerns itself, in broad terms, with the intellectual context of the students’ specialized
studies and of their lives within and beyond the university. This context includes several separate,
though interrelated, areas of knowledge where students will inevitably exercise choices and be required
to make well- informed judgments. In their liberal studies, therefore, students acquire knowledge of
basic concepts and current thinking in the physical and biological sciences, the social and behavioral
sciences and the arts and humanities. They also begin to understand the interrelationship of these
disciplines and, indeed, of all knowledge and experience.
At ALHOSN University, the general education program asks students to deal directly with their own
values and with values other than their own. The skills, knowledge, and values developed by students in
this program are clearly applicable to their academic, professional, personal, and society lives. They
enable students to improve the quality of their lives both during and after their studies in the
university. Ultimately, this is the true test of their success and the success of ALHOSN University.
The program is intended to:
1. Provide all students regardless of their majors, with the basic foundation they need to help
themselves succeed in their college study, and ongoing life-long learning after graduation,
as better informed members of the society.
2. Help students understand the values inherent in their culture, and to be aware of the
Islamic culture and civilization and beliefs.
3. Help students develop their intellectual and communication skills in a global technology –
based environment.
4. Help student understand and appreciate the role of science and technology in the development
of society and their effects on man-kind’s welfare in the 21st century.
5. Prepare students to think critically, and to use creative thinking and analytical techniques
in problem solving throughout their academic and professional life.
6. Increase students’ awareness of current global environmental, economic, cultural, health, and
social issues of today’s complex and diverse world
7. Develop students’ understanding of professional ethics.
8. Enhance students’ aesthetic values and taste in order for them to appreciate and create
beautiful surroundings.
9. Apply students’ learning to their professional, personal, and societal lives.
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