Essential Education at EKU

Transform Your Foundation: Essential Education at EKU

Welcome to essential education, Eastern Kentucky University’s General Education program. Education shouldn’t feel like a checklist of unrelated requirements. At EKU, we believe your general education courses should spark curiosity, bridge disciplines, and prepare you to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Essential education is a dynamic, interconnected experience that empowers you to build meaningful skills for both your career and your life.

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Why Essential Education Matters

Modern careers and complex global challenges do not exist in isolated silos. Essential education gives you a distinct advantage by embedding high-demand skills directly into your coursework while giving you the freedom to explore what truly matters to you.

Interconnected Pathways: Students can explore foundational studies through compelling, contemporary themes, such as artificial intelligence.

Essential Skill Integration: Every course deliberately develops transferable skills employers value most: critical thinking, adaptive problem-solving, communication, digital literacy, and civic engagement.

Seamless Structure: You gain a richer, more purpose-driven academic experience without adding extra time or cost to your degree. Essential education fits within a standard 30-credit-hour framework.

A Better Way to Learn

By organizing courses around real-world challenges, essential education helps you see how different disciplines intersect and inform one another. You will go beyond basic concepts; you’ll apply knowledge to modern issues, exploring how technology, ethics, science, and the humanities come together to solve complex problems. Essential education transforms your foundational requirements into a launching pad for your unique passions and future career.

Essential Education Mission

The mission of general education is to promote learning that is central to the intellectual pursuits associated with our educational programs and to enable students to make informed choices about matters of public and personal significance in a democratic society and global community. The general education program helps students to become informed, independent thinkers by developing competencies in communication, quantitative analysis, and critical thinking by helping them understand and appreciate cultures, individuals, the natural environment, and the global society. Courses that are used to satisfy the program’s major requirements cannot be used to satisfy essential education requirements.

Essential Education Goals

Students will be able to:

Use critical thinking and disciplinary knowledge to examine issues and to identify solutions. (Knowledge Competency)
Distinguish the methods that underlie the search for knowledge. (Methods Competency)
Integrate knowledge and methods that will deepen their understanding of, and will inform their own choices about, issues of personal or public importance.
Apply essential, transferable skills to academic, professional, or civic experiences, enabling them to adapt, contribute, and thrive in a rapidly changing world.

10 Essential Skills

Communicate effectively
Think critically to solve problems and create new ideas and solutions
Apply quantitative reasoning skills to analyze and solve numerical problems
Interact effectively with others
Adapt to changing circumstances while leading and supporting others
Perform professionally
Engage in civic life to improve society
Collaborate and work in teams
Apply academic knowledge, skills and abilities
Use information for decision making

Coming soon!

What is a pathway?

A collection of courses within the Essential Education Elements which examine a theme, or real-world problem, from various disciplinary perspectives
An optional route for students to meet core requirements while selecting Essential Education courses that integrate the theme
For 2026-27, Artificial Intelligence was selected as the inaugural Pathway theme

Pathway Criteria:

Minimum of 5 courses committed to the pathway theme across at least 3 sub Elements
Interdisciplinary appeal and application
Broad, timeless topics with sustained relevance
Clear integration of Essential Skills across participating courses
Demonstrated student interest and career applicability

Why Pathways?

The Pathway model is designed to improve students’ engagement in Essential Education by helping them see the relevance and purpose of their coursework.
Rather than experiencing Essential Education courses as a set of disconnected requirements, students in a Pathway encounter a shared theme across multiple courses and disciplines.
The Pathways structure helps students make meaningful connections between what they are learning, the Essential Skills they are developing, and the complex real-world challenges they will inevitably face.

What are the steps for completing a Pathway or Pathway Course Proposal?

Preliminary Pathway or Pathway Course Interest
Schedule a consultation with the Essential Skills and Pathways Operational Committee
Complete the Pathway or Pathway Course Interest form
The submission will be reviewed by the Essential Skills and Pathways Operational Committee.
Proposals approved for full submission will receive further instruction and access to the application form.
A proposal to add a Pathway or Pathway Course to or remove a Pathway or Pathway Course from EKU Essential Education
Letter of interest to and consultation with the Essential Skills and Pathways Operational Committee
As relevant, for approval or notification:
Department Curriculum Committee–Approval or Notification
College Curriculum Committee–Approval or Notification
Pathways and Essential Skills Committee–Approval
Essential Education Committee–Approval
Council on Academic Affairs–Approval or Notification

What happens when students complete a pathway?

Students who complete a Pathway are enriched by an intellectually invigorating and distinctive experience in their Essential Education courses. Students completing Pathway requirements also receive formal recognition of their achievement on their transcripts. This recognition can be shared with potential employers or graduate programs.

Who is eligible to complete a pathway?

Any undergraduate student completing the Essential Education curriculum may choose to add a Pathway.
Pathways are optional and are designed to help students personalize their Essential Education experience around a theme of interest while still completing required Essential Education courses. Students should work with their academic advisor to determine how Pathway courses fit within their degree plan and graduation timeline.

How do students add a pathway?

Pathways do not need to be formally declared like a major, minor, or certificate. Instead, students complete a Pathway by taking the required number of Pathway-designated Essential Education courses.
To complete a Pathway, students should:
Review the list of approved Pathway courses (below) for the theme they are interested in.
Work with their academic advisor to select Pathway courses that also meet their Essential Education requirements.
Complete the required Pathway courses across the required Elements.
Confirm with their advisor that their completed coursework satisfies the Pathway requirements.
After students complete the required Pathway coursework, the university will review the student’s record and add Pathway recognition to the transcript when requirements are met. Because Pathways are optional and are not formally declared, students should work closely with their advisor to plan ahead, track progress, and make sure selected courses fit their degree plan and graduation timeline.

Which courses are part of the AI pathway?

AI Pathway Courses

Syllabus Content for Essential Education courses

EKU’s Essential Education (formerly General Education) includes an Element structure, an optional Pathways model, and the implementation of the 10 Essential Skills framework. The following syllabus statement must be included for all Essential Education courses, and it replaces previous versions of the General Education Goals. This information standardizes the language around the Essential Education mission, program-level learning objectives, and Essential Skills, providing students with a new way of articulating their capabilities and connecting their learning across courses and disciplines.

EKU Faculty: please ensure that Essential Education course syllabi incorporate this critical material, in addition to faculty-approved, course-level SLOs and content. Faculty teaching Essential Education courses should also ensure that syllabi list the correct Element, as reflected in the new Essential Education Element structure listed in the current academic year catalog.

The Syllabus Statement is linked here.

Sample syllabus (SOC 131)

For more information contact Dr. Jennifer Wies at jennifer.wies@eku.edu.

Essential Education courses are assessed during a two-year cycle.
2026-2027 is the Data Collection Year. All Essential Education courses are required to assess each Essential Skill and Competency during either Fall 2026 or Spring 2027 for data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Assessment instruments may combine up to one Essential Education Competency and one Essential Skill.
2027-2028 is the Implementation Year. All Essential Education courses are required to implement a student learning improvement based on the analysis of results for each Essential Education Competency and each Essential Skill for their Element.
Assessment reports are due by February 1, 2028. For report templates and the submission link, see the Strategic Planning and Assessment Reports (STAR) webpage.

Essential Education Assessment Resources:

Essential Education Distribution

Element	Focus	Credits
1A	Written Communication 1	3
1B	Written Communication 2	3
1C	Oral Communication	3
2A	Quantitative Reasoning	3
2B	Natural Sciences	3
3A	Arts	3
3B	Humanities	3
4A	Global and Historical Perspectives	3
4B	Social and Behavioral Sciences	3
Flex/Elective	Students may choose any 3 credits from this area	3

Essential Skill Pairings by Element

Sub-Element/Area	Skill 1/Essential Skill	Skill 2/Essential Skill
1A	ES 10: Use information for decision-making.	ES 1: Communicate effectively.
1B	ES 10: Use information for decision-making.	ES 5: Adapt to changing circumstances while leading and supporting others.
1C	ES 10: Use information for decision-making.	ES 8: Collaborate and work in teams.
2A	ES 10: Use information for decision-making.	ES 3: Apply quantitative reasoning skills to analyze and solve numerical problems.
2B	ES 10: Use information for decision-making.	ES 2: Think critically to solve problems and create new ideas and solutions.
3A	ES 10: Use information for decision-making.	ES 7: Engage in civic life to improve society.
3B	ES 10: Use information for decision-making.	ES 2: Think critically to solve problems and create new ideas and solutions.
4A	ES 10: Use information for decision-making.	ES 1: Communicate effectively.
4B	ES 10: Use information for decision-making.	ES 4: Interact effectively with people.

Related Resources

What is a pathway?

Pathway Criteria:

Why Pathways?

What are the steps for completing a Pathway or Pathway Course Proposal?

What happens when students complete a pathway?

Who is eligible to complete a pathway?

How do students add a pathway?

Which courses are part of the AI pathway?

Tools

Students

Faculty

Employees