Another Hurdle to Jump Over

5/1/08

By Jennifer Ingram
Critic Staff

In Meri Stiles’ Intro to Human Services class this past week students were giving speeches on a term paper that they wrote.

The speech that they gave in front of their class counted as the newest graduation standard. Students are required to give a speech to two different professors to meet the oral expression standard.

The other graduation standards are written expression, quantitative reasoning and information literacy. Written expression is embedded in upper level courses, quantitative reasoning can be embedded in upper level courses or be taken as an online assessment depending on major, and information literacy is taken as an online assessment.

There are exceptions for certain majors.

“Education majors can be exempted from taking the written expression and the quantitative reasoning portions off the graduation standards if they passed the writing and math components of Praxis 1, “Diane Tanguay an Education and Human Service major said. Praxis 1 is a standardized test which tests students’ knowledge in three aspects reading, writing and math.

Juniors and seniors have different graduation standards than freshman and sophomores because the standards were introduced over a number of years.

Graduation requirements
If you came in 2004-2005
Written expression

If you came in 2005-2006
Written expression
Information literacy
Quantitative reasoning

If you came in 2006-2007
Written expression
Information literacy
Quantitative reasoning
Oral expression prior to graduation

If you came in 2007-2008
Written expression
Information literacy
Quantitative reasoning
Oral expression prior to graduation