Navigate Course

Why do Students take Navigate courses?

Navigate courses provide UCCS students with a common educational experience at the upper-division level that broadly expands their perspective beyond their major discipline, thus clarifying the value and relevance of Compass Curriculum learning and skills to their future work and lives. All Navigate courses center on the idea of "Knowledge In Action" and engage students actively in applying and integrating knowledge, which is drawn from a range of disciplines and includes advanced-level critical and creative thinking.  

Navigate courses also promote curricular and intellectual connections between students' Compass Curriculum and major coursework, while providing students an opportunity to integrate their learning well beyond their disciplinary area of study, thus distinguishing the Navigate course from the Summit experience within a student's major.

Navigate courses are part of the Compass Goals approved by faculty in 2010.

Goal 1: Evaluate and Create

Students will develop intellectual and practical skills central to investigation, creative pursuits, and problem solving. Students will gather, understand, analyze, and evaluate information as well as synthesize that information in order to create and articulate new ideas. This area includes:

• Critical and creative thinking
• Quantitative and qualitative reasoning
• Information literacy
• Communication: reading, writing, speaking, and listening

Goal 2: Know and Explore

Students will have a broad understanding of fundamental explorations, applications, and innovations in the natural sciences, social and behavioral sciences, and arts and humanities. This area includes knowledge of:

• The physical and natural world
• Humanities, arts, and culture
• Society, social and economic institutions, health, and human behavior

Students will cultivate self-awareness and understanding of their impact—locally, nationally, and globally. Students will be prepared to participate effectively in a society that encompasses diverse experiences, perspectives, and realities. This area includes:

• Responsibility—personal, civic, and social
• Engagement—creative, collaborative, artistic, and innovative

Navigate courses help students learn about:

• How academic knowledge and skills can be applied to solve practical problems outside of your disciplinary area of study. This is the “knowledge in action” component of the course.
• Intellectual and curricular intersections between your major coursework and other areas as a way to integrate and apply learning.
• Explore what it takes to work with different types of people with different perspectives.

Essential Learning Outcomes:

• Apply and integrate knowledge from a range of disciplines, including interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary research.
• Gather, critically analyze and evaluate quantitative information within relevant disciplinary contexts.
• Gather, critically analyze and evaluate qualitative information within relevant disciplinary contexts.
• Demonstrate the core ethical principles and responsible methods of your discipline.

All Navigate Courses should:

• Include significant multidisciplinary content, perspectives or research that demonstrates meaningful breadth across or between disciplines
• Engage students actively in applying and integrating knowledge, which is drawn from a range of disciplines
• Promote curricular and intellectual connections between students’ coursework for the Compass Curriculum and the work they do for their academic majors
• Include opportunities for advanced-level critical thinking
• Focus on the concept of “knowledge in Action” that applies knowledge to real world endeavors

Navigate Course Requirements:

• Students shall fulfill the Navigate requirement outside their major degree prefix with a multidisciplinary course that is approved by the Compass Curriculum.
• Students may choose from any Navigate course across the campus.
• Navigate courses shall be at the 3000 level or higher