Belmont General Education Requirements

Begin your Belmont journey in community. First Year Foundations connects you with a small group of classmates and a faculty mentor as you explore big questions, build habits for college-level learning and lay the groundwork for lifelong wellbeing. You’ll combine the intellectual curiosity of a first-year seminar with the holistic wellness support that carries you through your time at Belmont.

Strengthen your skills through personal, expository and argumentative writing. This course builds the foundation for the writing you'll do across every discipline at Belmont.

Take your writing further with research-based work that bridges your first-year foundation and your upper-division coursework with an emphasis on research, reflection and thoughtful use of emerging technologies. Prerequisite: First Year Writing.

Engage with the unfolding story of God's relationship with the world in Christ, and consider what that story means for human life. This is a shared foundation for every Belmont student, taken in your first year.

Develop the confidence and clarity to communicate effectively. You’ll learn to speak persuasively, listen actively, engage in dialogue across differences and communicate ethically and professionally. You should take this course in your first two years.

Strengthen your ability to analyze data, evaluate quantitative claims and apply mathematical tools across disciplines. Choose from an expanded menu of courses, including statistics, data science, calculus and computer science.

Explore how individuals, communities and institutions interact and shape society. Choose from a menu of courses in history, economics, political science, sociology and more. You may also select a special-topics course designed around today's most pressing questions.

Examine what it means to be human through literature, philosophy, language and culture. These courses cultivate empathy, sharpen your writing and reading skills and offer insight into how people across time and place have made meaning in the world.

Discover how the natural world works through scientific reasoning and hands-on experimentation. Choose from courses in biology, chemistry, physics, neuroscience, psychological science and more.

Learn to interpret and create through art, music, theatre, dance or design. These courses help you see how beauty and artistic tradition shape culture and connect us to something greater than ourselves.

Continue your exploration of faith and meaning with a journey through spiritual and theological topics and traditions, in connection with your own lived experience. Prerequisite: Encountering the Bible and a minimum of 48 completed hours — typically taken in your third year.

Bring your Belmont education full circle. In your final semester, you'll reflect on how your Foundations and major coursework connect, explore what a meaningful life looks like, and consider how your experience at Belmont will shape what comes next. Must be taken in your final 30 hours.

• 6 hours in World Language (2000-level or higher)
• 3 additional hours in Foundations in Humanities
• 3 additional hours in Foundations in Social Context
• 3 additional hours in any Foundations course

• 3 additional hours in Foundations in Scientific Discovery
• 3 additional hours in any MTH-prefix course, 1130 or higher
• 3 additional hours in Foundations in Social Context
• 3 additional hours in Foundations in Humanities
• 3 additional hours in any Foundations course

Some degree programs require specific courses that support preparation for the major. These may include technical requirements, which are specific courses used to fulfill certain Foundations Requirements, or tool courses, which provide knowledge or skills needed for the major but are taken outside of the major itself.

Technical requirements are listed with your major in the University Catalog and appear in Degree Works. Tool courses are separate from Foundations Requirements and are also identified within your degree requirements.