Through the Transitions category, Oregon State University commits to consciously and deliberately supporting students beginning their OSU educational journey. Students will formulate goals and strategies for their personal, academic, and professional growth; identify ways to engage in their communities; familiarize themselves with tools and resources for student success; and understand the common values that guide OSU’s undergraduate education.  

Student surveys suggest that nearly all students list career-related goals as a primary reason they come to college. The Beyond OSU requirement is intended to incorporate career development into the curriculum, thereby ensuring that every student has the skills and knowledge needed to find meaningful work in their field or advance in their current career after completing their academic journey at OSU. The focus of Beyond OSU will be on career preparation activities that prepare students for their post-graduation goals. Beyond OSU will also help students connect their experiences to the career readiness and career advancement skills both employers and universities have deemed necessary to succeed in the working world: the NACE Career Competencies. 

Beyond OSU is a minimum non-credit requirement, meaning students are not paying additional money to enroll in a course or to take credits to receive education and support the university deems critical to student success. Non-credit requirements are not meant to be a check box or add a burden to students, rather they are ensuring all students get to plan for their future and economic advancement. Beyond OSU I emphasizes educating students on career development concepts related to students’ career goals. Beyond OSU II requires students to gain insights through participating in experiences and apply those concepts to their future goals. 

The advanced Difference, Power, and Oppression requirement is an upper division and field-specific course that engages students in critical reflection on the complexity of the structures, institutions, and ideologies that sustain systemic oppression, discrimination, and the inequitable distribution of systemic power and resources within and across communities. Such examinations will utilize a field-specific focus in order to enhance and promote responsible, ethical, and anti-racist engagement by preparing students to understand and disrupt these systems as they manifest in their field. 

A central goal of this category is to have students wrestle with complex, multifaceted problems, and work to solve them and/or evaluate potential solutions from multiple points of view. Overall, this is a course that is designed to deepen how students think about problem-solving in ways that transcend disciplinary-specific approaches. Specifically, we want to help students achieve transdisciplinary thinking - a method of studying complex problems that integrates ideas from diverse scholarly fields in order to deal with the inherent complexity of some urgent problems of the present human situation (Oxford).   

In response to longstanding campus interest in implementing a teamwork component into general education requirements, Seeking Solutions courses will include interdisciplinary student teamwork as a core component. Teamwork is a prominent component of best practices in general education. In addition, stakeholder groups, notably our industry partners, consistently emphasize that working in groups with disparate others (people with different backgrounds, goals, and priorities) is an area in which students need experience and practice. 

In accordance with our goals for learning and general education at OSU, the issues and problems focused on in this category will be considered from the angle of the global dimension. 

Writing Elevation provides students with quality intermediate-level writing instruction, practice, and feedback between the Writing Foundations and Writing Intensive Curriculum (WIC) categories. The courses in this category will also strengthen the connections between writing and students’ chosen field of study. The goal of this requirement is to elevate students’ ability to write within a range of contexts, while also preparing them for their chosen academic discipline and WIC courses.   

Beyond the writing skills and practice gained in WR I and WR II courses, students need to learn to write as members of the discipline or disciplines in which they have chosen to major.  Writing Intensive courses, which are taken in the major, typically in the junior or senior year, introduce students to the genres, purposes, audiences, content, and conventions of writing in the major.  Student writers gain experience with the resources used in their field and the formats and documentation style used to communicate knowledge.   Through inquiry-based writing in the discipline, students gain understanding and knowledge of disciplinary goals and concepts.  Students are encouraged to complete Writing Foundations and Writing Elevation requirements before enrolling in their WIC course.