Student learning outcomes are those skills you will learn no matter what your major is, or which classes you take.

These are fundamental skills you will learn while attending Chattanooga State that demonstrate to employers you are well educated and ready for the 21st century workforce.

Communication Skills

Communication is the development and expression of ideas through the effective use of the English language, essential to students' success in school and in the world. Students must learn to read and listen critically, and to write and speak thoughtfully, clearly, coherently, and persuasively. Written communication involves learning to work in many genres and styles. It can involve working with many different writing technologies, and mixing texts, data, and images. Oral communication is a prepared, purposeful presentation designed to increase knowledge, to foster understanding, or to promote change in the listeners' attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors.

Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking is a habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion. It includes a systematic process of exploring issues, objects, or works through the collection and analysis of evidence that results in informed conclusions or judgments and includes the suspension of judgment until evidence has been gathered and weighed. Analysis is the process of breaking complex topics or issues into parts to gain a better understanding of them. Synthesis involves the ability to see connections between diverse kinds of knowledge, both within and between fields, the ability to see the larger whole and purpose. Students demonstrate their skill through problem solving and the application of the critical processes relevant to their chosen field of study.

Information Technology

Students must develop the ability to know when there is a need for information, and identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively and responsibly use and share that information for the problem at hand. Students must become facile in using a variety of information resources and technologies , developing, not only competence in using current technologies but a basic understanding of the nature and purpose of those technologies that will enable them to transfer their understanding to newly developing information technologies.

Global/Cultural Awareness

Students, as citizens and educated members of their communities, need to know and appreciate their own human cultural heritage and its development in a historical and global context. Through the study of other cultures, students develop an understanding, which they otherwise would not have, of the present as informed by the past. Students develop skills that allow them to understand and interact with peoples of various cultures through a study of the social and cultural institutions, the arts and cultural artifacts, and the history and values of their own societies and other societies and cultures in the world. Students further develop an understanding of the interdependent nature of the individual, family, society, history, art, and cultural artifacts that both shape and define human behavior and quality of life.

Quantitative Literacy

Quantitative literacy is a competency and comfort in working with numerical data. It involves the ability to reason and solve quantitative problems from a wide array of authentic contexts and everyday life situations.

Students will be able to understand and create arguments supported by quantitative evidence and be able to clearly communicate those arguments in a variety of formats (using words, tables, graphs, mathematical equations, etc., as appropriate).

Competence in a Specialty

Students develop, through specialized courses in their major fields of study , the skills, knowledge, and qualifications required to work in their intended fields.

Work Ethic

Work Ethic is a moral set of values internalized and exhibited by a person or group. It is normally defined by a list of positive behaviors like diligence, honesty, efficiency, initiative, and cooperativeness. Through collaboration with all stakeholders, ChSCC has chosen four attributes: Teamwork, Integrity, Productivity, and Professionalism to define Work Ethic for our campus.

Chattanooga State Community College - Chattanooga, TN - Fall 2013 - Institutional Student Learning Outcomes