General Education at Pierce College prepares graduates to live and work in a dynamically changing world by emphasizing the development of a broad foundation spanning the five core abilities and the five fundamental areas of knowledge.

Core Abilities Outcomes

Critical, Creative and Reflective Thinking

Graduates will evaluate, analyze, synthesize, and generate ideas; construct informed, meaningful, and justifiable conclusions; and process feelings, beliefs, biases, strengths, and weaknesses as they relate to their thinking, decisions, and creations.

Effective Communication


Information Competency

Graduates will be able to seek, find, evaluate and use information, and employ information technology to engage in lifelong learning.

Intercultural Engagement

Graduates demonstrate self-efficacy in intercultural engagement to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion through reflections and expressions of cultural humility, empathy, and social and civic engagement and action. Further, graduates examine how identities/positionalities such as races, social classes, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, and cultures impact perceptions, actions, and the distribution of power and privilege in communities, systems, and institutions.

Global Citizenship

Graduates will be able to critically examine the relationship between self, community, and/or environments, and to evaluate and articulate potential impacts of choices, actions, and contributions for the creation of sustainable and equitable systems.

Fundamental Areas of Knowledge (FAK) Outcomes




Graduates acquire critical skills to interpret, analyze, and evaluate forms of human expression, which can include creation and performance as an expression of human experience.

Social Sciences

Graduates analyze and interpret social phenomenon using social science theories and methods.

Natural Sciences


Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning


Program Outcomes

Program Outcomes are specific to each program of study and can be found on the program's website.