SUNY Potsdam

The General Education Foundations (GEF) are a series of courses designed to build and strengthen your writing, speaking, mathematical, critical thinking skills and information literacy skills at an introductory level.

These requirements are for students who matriculated in Fall 2006 or after. Most students will take these courses within their first year. For more information about these courses, choose the links below.

A. Communication Experience (2 Courses; minimum 7 credits)

• [FW] First-Year Writing
  
• [FS]  First-Year Speaking, Reasoning and Research

B. Quantitative Experience (1 Course, minimum 3 credits)

• [FM] First-Year Math

C. Critical Thinking Experience (1 Course, minimum 3 credits)

• [FC] First-Year Critical Thinking

Students who matriculated before Fall 2006 are subject to First Year Experience requirements rather than General Education Foundation requirements.

Information Literacy Skills

Information Literacy is an essential skill for successful academic work, as well as for life-long learning. Unlike the First Year Experience coursework, the General Education Foundations (GEF) has explicit requirements for Information Literacy within three of the four foundation designators: FW, FS and FC. 

Each of the three suitable designators – First-Year Writing (FW), First-Year Speaking (FS), and First-Year Critical Thinking (FC) - within GEF has accompanying Information Literacy tutorials, as well as a required assignment, to ensure that students are gaining a basic foundation in information literacy during their first year at SUNY Potsdam.

The information literacy tutorials, required of all students in FW, FS, and FC courses cover discrete basic skills and concepts to form a common background in Information Literacy for all student at SUNY Potsdam. 

Course instructors may schedule a library session for their class with the library Information Literacy coordinator (see the Library Services Directory for “Instruction Requests”).

The first three links below detail the tutorials, general assignment, teaching outcomes and associated student behaviors to be covered in FW, FS, and FC classes. 

• GEF First-Year Writing (FW) tutorial list, assignment, and outcomes/behavior table 
• GEF First-Year Speaking (FS) tutorial list, assignment, and outcomes/behavior table 
• GEF First-Year Critical Thinking (FC) tutorial list, assignment, and outcomes/behavior table 
• How to see the tutorial grades for students in your classes. 

  Questions?  Contact Carol Franck, franckcr@potsdam.edu, 267-3310.