General Education Requirements

SUNY Gen. Ed. categories and approved courses.
This information is also available in our current College catalog.

TC3 Gen. Ed. categories.

Students at TC3 will need to fulfill certain requirements in general education. Students who plan to earn an Associate of Applied Science degree (A.A.S.) will need to be concerned only with the TC3 general education requirements in order to graduate. These requirements were adopted by the faculty of TC3 and are met in different ways for each of the academic programs at TC3. The course requirements for each TC3 program are set up so that each TC3 Gen. Ed. requirement is met by the time the entire program has been completed by a student. The TC3 Gen. Ed. requirements should be almost invisible to the student. If the student chooses each course according to the guidelines on front page of the program audit sheet, the requirements will be met.

Students who plan to earn the Associate of Arts (A.A.) or Associate of Science (A.S.) degree will have to fulfill all of the TC3 Gen. Ed. requirements, as well as at least 21 credits of SUNY Gen. Ed. Courses from at least four of the SUNY Gen. Ed. Categories. The TC3 Gen. Ed. requirements will again be almost invisible to the student, and if each course is chosen according to the program audit sheet, these local requirements will certainly be met.

The achievement of the SUNY Gen. Ed. requirements is another matter. In some programs, the SUNY Gen. Ed. requirements will be met automatically as the student completes each elective course or specific required course. In other programs, there is more flexibility and thus more room for mistakes and misunderstanding. SUNY Gen. Ed. requirements must be fulfilled by making correct choices for the various electives (in science, social science, mathematics, humanities, history and liberal arts). The student must work closely with the advisor to choose those electives so that at least 21 credits of SUNY Gen. Ed. Courses from at least four of the SUNY Gen. Ed. categories are completed by the time the program is completed.

A possible cause of confusion is the rare case where a single course at TC3 appears in more than one of the SUNY Gen. Ed. categories. An example of this is ANTH 202, in categories 3 and 6. If a student takes such a course, it will only count as filling either SUNY goal 3 or SUNY goal 6, but not both.

It is important to note again that the A.A. or A.S. student must complete 21 credits of SUNY Gen. Ed. Courses from at least four of the SUNY Gen. Ed. categories in order to graduate, regardless of transfer plans. The student may be planning to transfer to a SUNY college, to a private college, or to an out-of state college. The student may not be planning to transfer at all. Since all New York state community colleges are part of the SUNY system, and since TC3 grants the A.A. and A.S. degrees, the 21 SUNY Gen. Ed. credits must be completed as part of any A.A or A. S. degree program offered here.

Some students in the A.A.S. programs will be planning to transfer to a four-year college, even though these programs are not designed with transfer as a goal. Advisors working with A.A.S. students who do plan to transfer should encourage the students to include as many SUNY Gen. Ed. requirements as possible in their choice of electives. This will put the student in better standing upon transfer into a SUNY bachelor’s degree program.