You may be familiar with course tagging from past semesters, but now there are even more tools to make building your class schedule with Shared Competencies in mind as easy as possible!
Course tagging allows students to identify courses they can enroll in based on the six Shared Competencies. The Shared Competencies are:
- Ethics, Integrity, and Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
- Critical and Creative Thinking
- Scientific Inquiry and Research Skills
- Civic and Global Responsibility
- Communication Skills
- Information Literacy and Technological Agility
Course tags highlight the knowledge and skills you can expect to gain in specific courses. This allows you to schedule classes based on the skills you want to develop instead of just what fits into your schedule.
For example, as a broadcast and digital journalism student, I take an abundance of classes with the Competencies of Communication Skills, Critical and Creative Thinking, and Ethics, Integrity, and Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion. In the field of journalism, these skills are crucial to being an effective communicator, and I get to develop these skills inside the classroom to help me be a great candidate for communications opportunities after graduation. When I schedule my Fall 2025 classes, these are the Competencies I am looking out for in the course tags.
The search tools for the Shared Competencies make this process easy. Searching for Competencies is now possible within Schedule Builder, MySlice Course Search and the Course Catalog. For more information on how to use these tools and search for specific tags, check out a video on selecting classes with the Shared Competencies in mind on Kaltura!
Written By Naimah Rahman ’25, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications