John Jay College Option Requirement (6-12 Credits)
As a central part of the General Education curriculum, each senior CUNY college offers special courses relevant to its particular mission. John Jay’s College Option is really the heart of our whole General Education curriculum, with courses designed to focus on justice at the individual and national/global levels.
If you enter John Jay as a freshman starting Fall 2013 or after, you will need to fulfill four courses (12 credits) as follows:
1. A 100-level course (Justice and the Individual), taken during the first year, will require you to:
- Describe your own relationship to significant issues of justice.
- Identify problems and propose solutions through evidence-based inquiry.
- Assess the effectiveness of your own role in collaborations with people of diverse backgrounds.
- Demonstrate effective planning and reflection to accomplish specific course outcomes.
- Engage with co-curricular activities (i.e. clubs, student activities, lectures, tutoring, academic advisement, community service) to develop academic goals and personal growth.
2. A 300-level course focusing on ONE of the following:
Struggle for Justice and Equality in the U.S. will require you to:
- Develop an understanding of the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts of the struggles for justice in the United States.
- Analyze how struggles for justice have shaped U.S. society and culture.
- Differentiate multiple perspectives on the same subject.
OR
Justice in Global Perspective will require you to:
- Develop an understanding of the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts of the struggles for justice throughout the world.
- Analyze how struggles for justice have shaped societies and cultures throughout the world.
- Differentiate multiple perspectives on the same subject.
This course will require you to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of formative events, ideas or works in the arts, humanities, mathematics, natural sciences or social sciences.
- Analyze the significance of major developments in U.S. and World History.
- Differentiate multiple perspectives on the same subject.
This course will require you to:
- Express yourself clearly in one or more forms of communication, such as written, oral, visual, or aesthetic.
- Maintain self-awareness and critical distance.
- Work collaboratively.
- Listen, observe, analyze, and adapt messages in a variety of situations, cultural contexts, and target audiences in a diverse society.
All John Jay students who enter as freshmen in Fall 2013 or after need to take Foreign Language (FL) 101 and 102 course unless exempted from those requirements. FL 102 (e.g. SPA 102, FRE 102, ITA 102, etc.) goes towards the College Option Communications requirement.
Students who are exempt from the foreign language requirement may choose any course to fulfill the College Option Communications requirement.
Exemptions: Students with prior knowledge of a foreign language can become exempt from the requirement by taking a placement examination and scoring high enough to place above the FL 102 (or 112) level. Those who place into the FL 102 (or 112) level will only need one semester of that language to fulfill the requirement.
How Many of the College Option Courses do You Need to Take?
Our College Option requires anywhere from 6-12 credits, depending on various factors:
- If you enter John Jay as a freshman starting Fall 2013 or after, you will need to fulfill all four of the College Option courses (12 credits).
- If you enter John Jay as a transfer student starting Fall 2013 or after, how many College Option courses you need varies, depending on what institution you’re transferring from, whether you earned a degree there, how many credits you’re transferring in, and how our Office of Academic Credit Evaluation evaluates and posts these transfer credits on your John Jay record.
Remember it is very important that you check with an Academic Advisor after your credits are posted so you are sure of what requirements you still need, but as a start, click on the Gen Ed Guidelines for Transfer Students chart.