Throughout the College's history, the faculty has expected all students to pursue a general education curriculum drawn from across the liberal arts. The faculty believes that there are areas of knowledge and understanding, modes of appreciation, and skills that are of general and lasting significance to the life of the mind. General Education provides a critical perspective on the ideas, values, expressions, and experiences that constitute human culture. General Education also encourages respect for the integrity of thought, judgment, creativity, and tradition beyond contemporary America. In addition, the faculty encourages each student to pursue some study in a language other than English.

The General Education curriculum honors the tradition of breadth and depth of intellectual experience while placing emphasis on cross-disciplinary collaboration and exploration. These requirements are an integral and focal component of a Bates education:

General Education Concentration (GEC)

In addition to a major, students must successfully complete course work in a second area of study, which may include a General Education Concentration (GEC), a minor, or a second major. A GEC consists of four courses or credits chosen from a faculty-designed menu. There are two types of concentrations:

1. GECs focusing on a particular issue, topic, or interdisciplinary area of inquiry

2. GECs within a single discipline

Some GECs also include relevant co-curricular experiences such as significant community service, music ensembles, summer research, or volunteer work that may be applied toward fulfillment of the GEC in lieu of a course. Most co-curricular experiences, while they may satisfy a GEC requirement, may not be counted toward the total credits needed for graduation. Some GECs allow the use of one or two non-Bates courses if they are preapproved by the GEC coordinator as comparable to the Bates courses in the concentration.

Some GECs, minors, and second majors are unavailable to students pursuing certain majors if the coursework is deemed too similar. Departments and programs are also permitted to exclude courses that may be counted toward their major/minor/GEC if these courses are used by a student for a second major, or their minor or GEC. Any such exclusions are detailed in the descriptions of the majors, minors, and GECs in the Catalog. In the event that a General Education Concentration is added after a student matriculates, the student may declare that GEC if it is feasible for them to complete the GEC requirements as stated.

Courses taken Pass/Fail may not apply to General Education Concentrations.

A complete list of General Education Concentrations can be found here.

The Writing-Attentive Curriculum

Students successfully complete three writing-attentive courses:

1. One First-Year Seminar taken in the first semester to fulfill the [W1].*

2. One course designated with [W2], taken in the sophomore year or later but prior to beginning the [W3] course;

3. One course designated with [W3], taken in the senior year, typically a senior thesis or capstone.

*If a student fails the First-Year Seminar, they must immediately enroll in a non-FYS course designated [W1] in their second semester at Bates.

All courses used to fulfill this requirement must be taken at Bates. Courses taken Pass/Fail may not apply to the writing requirement.

Modes of Inquiry

To acknowledge the importance of the entire scope of the liberal arts and to ensure additional breadth of education beyond the major and the second area of study, students successfully complete five distinct courses with different approaches to scholarly inquiry.

Courses that satisfy these requirements, which are labeled as such in the Bates Catalog and Schedule of Courses, significantly engage students with the particular Mode of Inquiry. In addition to providing opportunities for students to develop facility with the Mode of Inquiry, instructors may encourage students to critically evaluate the values, strengths, and limits of Mode-specific methodology. Students can then reflect on the epistemological differences between varied approaches to constructing knowledge. 

Students may count any number of their Mode of Inquiry courses toward their major and additional areas of study. Non-Bates courses can be applied to the Modes of Inquiry requirement if they are determined to be equivalent to a Bates course that is tagged with Mode designations. Conversely, unspecified non-Bates credit cannot be applied to the Modes of Inquiry requirement.

Courses taken Pass/Fail may not apply to the Modes of Inquiry requirement.

Analysis and Critique [AC]

This mode examines cultural products and processes to consider how and why meaning is created and contested, arguments are constructed, art is produced, and values are established. Courses with this designation help students understand how forms of representation create and communicate meaning as they explore the workings of language, rhetoric, informal reasoning, and systems of belief. Students analyze, for example, aesthetic patterns, artistic traditions, philosophical argumentation, and rhetorical strategies to acquire the critical skills to identify and investigate the complex dynamics, norms, beliefs, and agencies at play within cultural products and processes.

Creative Process and Production [CP]

This mode provides the skills requisite for the creation and production processes and experiments with ways to express, test, and/or give form to ideas. Whether making art, composing music, writing creatively, producing film, envisioning the world in a new language, or performing in various ways, students in courses with this designation engage with and develop their ideas and imagination. Students enter into a dialogue with past and current practices, reexamining them and gaining an understanding of the fields from a maker's, experimenter's, or performer's point of view.

Historical and Social Inquiry [HS]

This mode of inquiry explores the history and complexity of the individual, human societies, and social interaction, from the intimate to the global, across time and space. Courses with this designation pay attention to the diverse tools scholars use to examine systematically the way in which humans experience, construct, and behave within the social worlds they inhabit, around the world and across the millennia. They often consider how social structures define and distribute wealth, power, and status among different human populations. As students investigate the bidirectional relationships between individuals and groups, groups and societies, and societies and nations, they note how contextual variables at each level of analysis influence how people understand themselves and others and foster an empathetic understanding of the human condition.

Scientific Reasoning [SR]

Scientific reasoning is an iterative process that uses empirical observations to develop and test theories about the natural world. Courses with this designation teach students the utility of scientific reasoning when developing explanatory models that unify a broad range of systematic observations. Students explore the process of testing hypotheses and theories by comparing predictions to observations. Through activities that may include gathering, analyzing, and interpreting empirical measurements, students learn the value of reliable data for drawing scientific conclusions.

Quantitative and Formal Reasoning [QF]

Quantitative reasoning is the application of basic mathematics and statistics to interpret data, draw conclusions, and solve real-world problems. Formal reasoning involves developing, understanding, and manipulating symbols based on an explicit set of rules. Courses with this designation sharpen students' facility with numerical, logic, and other symbolic systems. By applying basic mathematics and analysis tools (e.g., graphing, simple statistics), students learn to extract meaning from real-world data. Experience with formal systems such as logic, computer programming, and mathematical proofs hones students' ability to make valid deductions in abstract contexts and sound judgments in everyday life. Learning how and when to engage explicit rules for decision making enables students to formulate and assess quantitative arguments and logical constructions.