General Education Requirements

General Education Requirements

General education (Gen Ed) requirements are courses that expand your understanding to be able to think critically, solve problems, generate innovative interdisciplinary ideas, and develop as Illinois leaders. You will learn more about these and your degree’s graduation requirements in your engineering orientation course. Some, like Composition I, should be completed in your first year at Illinois. Others can be taken as late as senior year. Your Academic Advisor will help determine if you should take any general education course(s) in your first semester.

General education requirements that may be relevant for your first year include:

• Humanities & The Arts (HUM):
• one 3 credit hour course
• one 3 credit hour course
• Social & Behavioral Science (SBS):
  • one 3 credit hour course
  • one 3 credit hour course
• Cultural Studies:
  • one Western/Comparative Culture course
  • one Non-Western Culture course
  • one U.S. Minority Culture course
• Composition I: RHET 105 Writing and Research, ESL 111 Intro to Academic Writing I  + ESL 112 Intro to Academic Writing II, or ESL 115 Principles of Academic Writing. Some students are required to take an ESL course(s) instead of a RHET course.
• Language Other Than English (LOTE): completion of the 3rd year of a non-English language in high school or 3rd level of a college-level non-English language course

Students may wish to take a general education course that counts towards more than one category. To view all general education requirements for engineering students, visit https://advising.grainger.illinois.edu/degree-requirements/general-education-requirements.