Appendix B - College Courses Meeting Minnesota Transfer Curriculum (MnTC)
Public colleges and universities in Minnesota have developed a common liberal arts education curriculum called the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. Completion of this defined transfer curriculum (40 credits) at one institution enables a student to receive credit for all lower-division general education requirements upon admission to any other Minnesota public institution. The Transfer Curriculum is intended to achieve the following 10 goals. The number preceding the course designation is the number of courses in the department that fulfill the requirement.
Develop writers and speakers who use the English language effectively and who read, write, speak, and listen critically. To help assure success in other course work, students are encouraged to fulfill introductory communication requirements as early as possible in their collegiate studies.
Understand/demonstrate the writing and speaking processes through invention, organization, drafting, revision, editing and presentation.
Participate effectively in groups with emphasis on listening, critical and reflective thinking, and responding.
Locate, evaluate, and synthesize in a responsible manner material from diverse sources and points of view.
Select appropriate communication choices for specific audiences.
Construct logical and coherent arguments.
Use authority, point-of-view, and individual voice and style in their writing and speaking.
Employ syntax and usage appropriate to academic disciplines and the professional world.
Develop thinkers who are able to unify factual, creative, rational, and value-sensitive modes of thought. Critical thinking is taught and used throughout the general education curriculum to develop students’ awareness of their own thinking and problem-solving procedures.
Gather factual information and apply it to a given problem in a manner that is relevant, clear, comprehensive, and conscious of possible bias in the information selected.
Imagine and seek out a variety of possible goals, assumptions, interpretations, or perspectives which can give alternative meanings or solutions to given situations or problems.
Analyze the logical connections among the facts, goals, and implicit assumptions relevant to a problem or claim; generate and evaluate implications that follow from them.
Recognize and articulate the value assumptions which underlie and affect decisions, interpretations, analyses, and evaluations made by ourselves and others.
Improve students’ understanding of natural science principles and methods of scientific inquiry.
Demonstrate understanding of scientific theories.
Formulate and test hypotheses by performing laboratory, simulation, or field experiments in at lease two of the natural science disciplines. One of these experimental components should develop, in greater depth, students’ laboratory experience in the collection of data, its statistical and graphical analysis, and an appreciation of its sources of error and uncertainty.
Communicate their experimental findings, analyses, and interpretations both orally and in writing.
Evaluate societal issues from a natural science perspective, ask questions about the evidence presented, and make informed judgments about science-related topics and policies.
Increase students’ knowledge of mathematical and logical modes of thinking in order to appreciate the breadth of mathematical applications, evaluate arguments, and detect false reasoning.
Illustrate historical and contemporary applications of mathematics/logical systems.
Clearly express mathematical/logical ideas in writing.
Explain what constitutes a valid mathematical/logical argument (proof).
Apply higher-order problem-solving and/or modeling strategies.
Increase students’ knowledge of how historians and social and behavioral scientists discover, describe, and explain the behaviors and interactions among individuals, groups, institutions, events and ideas.
Employ the methods and data that historians and social and behavioral scientists use to investigate the human condition.
Examine social institutions and processes across a range of historical periods and cultures.
Use and critique alternative explanatory systems or theories.
Develop and communicate alternative explanations or solutions for contemporary social issues.
To expand students’ knowledge of the human condition and human cultures, especially in relation to behaviors, ideas, and values as expressed in works of human imagination and thought.
Demonstrate awareness of the scope and variety of works in the arts and humanities.
Understand those works as expressions of individual and human values within an historical and social context.
Respond critically to works in the arts and humanities.
Engage in the creative process or interpretive performance.
Articulate an informed personal reaction to works in the arts and humanities.
Increase students’ understanding of individual and group differences (e.g. race, gender, and class) and their knowledge of the traditions and values of various groups of the United States.
Understand the development of and the changing meanings of group identities in the United States' history and culture.
Demonstrate an awareness of the individual and institutional dynamics of unequal power relations between groups in contemporary society.
Analyze their own attitudes, behaviors, concepts and beliefs regarding diversity, racism, and bigotry.
Describe and discuss the experience and contributions (political, social, economic, etc.) of the many groups that shape American society and culture, in particular those groups that have suffered discrimination and exclusion.
Demonstrate communication skills necessary for living and working effectively in a society with great population diversity.
Increase students’ understanding of the growing interdependence of nations and peoples and develop their ability to utilize a comparative perspective across cultural, social, economic and political experiences.
Describe and analyze political, economic, and cultural elements which influence relations of states and societies in their historical and contemporary dimensions.
Demonstrate knowledge of cultural, social, religious and linguistic differences.
Analyze specific international problems, illustrating the cultural, economic, and political differences that affect their solution.
Understand the role of a world citizen and the responsibility world citizens share for their common global future
Develop students’ capacity to identify, discuss, and reflect upon the ethical dimensions of political, social, and personal life, and to understand responsible and productive citizenship.
Examine, articulate, and apply their own ethical views.
Understand and apply core concepts (e.g. politics, rights and obligations, justice, liberty) to specific issues.
Analyze and reflect on the ethical dimensions of legal, social, and scientific issues.
Recognize the diversity of political motivations and interests of others.
Identify ways to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship
Improve students’ understanding of today’s complex environmental challenges.
Explain the basic structure and function of various natural ecosystems and of human adaptive strategies within those systems.
Discern patterns and interrelationships of bio-physical and socio-cultural systems.
Describe the basic institutional arrangements (social, legal, political, economic, religious) that are evolving to deal with environmental and natural resource challenges.
Evaluate critically environmental and natural resource issues in light of understandings about interrelationships, ecosystems, and institutions. propose and assess
Alternative solutions to environmental problems.
Articulate and defend the actions they would take on various environmental issues.
Technology and Information Resources
Students who complete the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum are also expected to use computers, libraries and other appropriate technology and information resources which play an increasingly important role in our personal, educational, and work lives.
Students who have not had experience with technology and information resources should contact an adviser to obtain assistance in registering for appropriate courses.
Individual courses from other MnSCU colleges and from the University of Minnesota transfer to Inver Hills Community College into the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. Such courses transfer according to the MnTC goal areas designated for them by the other schools. However, there is no guarantee that courses from private and non-Minnesota colleges will satisfy MnTC goals, even if the courses may be transferable as electives. Such courses are evaluated on an individual basis.