Providing General Education through Interdisciplinary Learning

Interdisciplinary learning is a cornerstone of General Education. The world's problems are not divided neatly into categories—and at American University of Yangon, we believe your education shouldn't be either. Our coursework will offer you the flexibility to explore a wide range of topics while encouraging you to connect them across academic disciplines, preparing you to be an effective problem-solver in an interconnected world.

While our students have the flexibility to pursue any chosen major upon successful transfer to one of our partner universities, here is a sample of their most common areas of interest:

Course Descriptions and Credit Hours

Arts, Media and Communication

ENGL 10, Academic Literacy, 3 credits — This course is designed to assist students in expository writing with an emphasis on research, source citation and longer expository essay development. American college-level literacy is crucial to the survival of our students when they transfer to an American university. The course develops these skills through the reading of essays, the analysis of rhetorical strategies, and the exploration and expression of ideas through the expository writing process, which includes formulating topics, constructing arguments, organizing information, revising, and editing.

LING 6, Advanced English Strategies, 3 credits — This course is designed to assist students in the types of sentence-to-paragraph development of expository composition expected at the college and university level. Emphasis is on developing good support for topic sentences and avoiding irrelevancy, developing sound reasoning, and creating effective introductions, conclusions, and transitions. Students will study and practice description, comparison-contrast, cause-effect, classification, argumentation, and other means of paragraph and expository essay development. 

LING 10, Introduction to Language, 3 credits — The study of language - including its nature, structure, use, history, and acquisition - with the goal of imparting (1) an understanding of the importance of language in human affairs, including social and cultural functions and (2) an appreciation of its complexity and diversity.

COM 7, Argumentation and Persuasion, 3 credits — Persuasion is a social tool for resolving controversy and forming opinions from the perspectives of both the persuader and the persuaded. An overview of logical analysis, evidence, reasoning and proof will also be presented. 

ARTH 11, Art History – Modern World, 3 credits — This course provides an introduction to Western art styles from the mid-14th century until the end of the 18th century, including Mannerism, Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassicism. Effects of precedence on modern art will also be examined. 

COMM 3, Fundamentals of Public Communication, 3 credits — This is a course in public speaking, emphasizing the required procedures for planning, writing, and delivering speeches in various expository topic areas, such as the “impromptu” speech, the persuasive speech, the informative speech and others. 

MUSIC 9, Introduction to Music, 3 credits — This is an introductory music appreciation course. Students will be asked to listen to various pieces of western music, and identify key elements such as the period of writing and the instrumentation. Music theory and aesthetics will be studied, including notation of rhythm and pitch. Students need not have the ability to play an instrument. 

Humanities

FRENCH 1A, Beginning French, 4 credits — This course is designed to equip students with the learning of conversational and written French. 

HUM 11, Humanities from Baroque to Modern, 3 credits — This course covers interrelationships among art, literature, music and philosophy from the 17th century Age of Reason in Europe to the present era. A preliminary survey of Greek and Roman through Renaissance periods will help students grasp the context of the development of western humanities. Where possible, a comparative approach will be taken, which gives students an opportunity to compare western and eastern humanities. 

ENG 20, Introduction to Literature, 4 credits — Literary appreciation and criticism will be encouraged through reading and close written analysis of short stories, selections from novels, drama, and poetry from diverse Western and non-Western cultures. 

PHIL 25, Methods of Reasoning, 3 credits — This course examines methods of good reasoning; identification of argument structure, development of skills in deductive and inductive reasoning, assessing observations and testimony reports, language and reasoning and logical fallacies. 

Science and Technology

MATH 150, Calculus with Applications I, 4 credits — Differential and integral calculus of functions of one variable: analytic geometry, limits, continuity, derivative, analysis of curves, integrals, applications; algebraic, trigonometric, logarithmic, and exponential functions, historical perspectives.

MATH 170, Calculus with Applications II, 4 credits — A continuation of differential and integral calculus: inverse trigonometric and hyperbolic functions, integration methods, indeterminate forms, coordinate systems, planes and lines in space, sequences and series, applications, and historical perspectives. This course includes a lab component using either computers or graphic calculators.

MATH 190, Calculus with Applications III, 4 credits — Differential and integral calculus of functions of several variables: three dimensional analytic geometry, vector calculus, partial derivatives, multiple integrals, line integrals, applications, and historical perspectives. Includes a computer laboratory.

MATH 45, College Mathematics, 3 credits — This course is a “bridge” course designed to help students with mathematics-related vocabulary and western-style critical thinking skills. The problems are not difficult from a mathematical perspective, but students are often asked to explain how they come up with the answers. Mathematical exercises in algebra, geometry, and some trigonometry are included, and students are also given work in graphs, statistics, and probability. 

PHYS 110, Electricity and Magnetism, 4 credits — This class covers a wide range of topics, including electric fields, forces and potential, circuits, magnetism, electromagnetic inductance, electromagnetic fields, wave and ray optics and optical instruments. Students will earn how electric and magnetic fields are generated from charges; understand the electrical and magnetic properties of matter and the interactions between charged objects; understand how to analyze basic AC and DC circuits; understand the interaction between changing electric and magnetic fields; and use the wave nature of light to analyze situations in physical and geometric optics.

BIOL 10, Life Science (Biology) w/online lab, 4 credits — This is an introductory Biology course which is both a GE requirement and a requirement for anyone going on to study in the sciences. It includes virtual lab work done by internet research. The course consists of an overview covering the basic chemical and physical foundations of Biology to evolutionary and ecological processes, with a special relation to human affairs. 

CFS 38, Lifespan Development, 3 credits — This course covers a balanced study of basic theories, research, applications and principles of physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development from birth to death. It includes behavior, sexuality, nutrition, health, stress, environmental relationships, and implications of death and dying. 

EES 1, Natural Disasters and Earth Resources w/lab, 4 credits — This course begins with plate tectonic theory and illustrates the relationship between geology and humans by examining geological resources and hazards such as earthquakes and volcanoes. 

PHYS 100, Physics of Mechanics, Heat and Wave Motion, 4 credits — This class covers the principles of mechanics, heat and wave motion. The areas of study which students will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of include Newtonian Physics, Conservation Laws, Applications of Newtonian Mechanics, Oscillations and Waves, and Thermodynamics. As Physics includes not just theory and equations, homework problems and an unambiguous solution but the design, construction, and analysis of experiments and simulations in lab sessions, a lab component is required.

CSCI 30 - Introduction to the Internet, 3 credits — Topics include email, web browsers, searching, evaluation of web resources, HTML, web-page design, encryption, basic network communication. Special emphasis on the underlying technologies.

Social Sciences

PL SI 2, American Government and Institutions, 3 credits — All students in America must complete a basic GE course in American government and institutions. The course summarizes the development and operation of the government in the United States. Students study how ideas, institutions, laws and people have constructed and maintained a political order in America. A comparative approach asking students to learn more about how their own government functions help students become better citizens in their own country as well as understand how American systems may differ from their own will be adopted.

HIST 12, American History from 1865, 3 credits — This course covers American history from 1865 (The American Civil War) until the present day. This course includes a review of significant events in American history and a review of the role of various ethnic and social groups in the ongoing formation of the American nation. A review of American foreign policy (how it is formed and what influences it) and its impact on the rest of the world will be studied.  

GEOG 2, Cultural Geography, 3 credits — This course covers emphasis on cultural rather than physical geography: topics such as population, patterns of settlement, agriculture industry, leisure and tourism, energy and water supplies will be covered. There is also an introductory coverage on plate tectonics, weathering, rivers, marine processes, weather and climate, and ecosystems insofar as they affect human activity. These topics are covered more extensively in another ISP course – Geology or EES. The text in use is designed for ESL students and so sacrifices complexity in favor of emphasis on critical thinking skills for second-language learners. 

ECON 40, Principles of Microeconomics, 3 credits — This course is an introduction to microeconomic theories of demand, production, and income distribution; price determination and resource allocation, under alternative forms of market organization; government regulation of economic activity; applied economic analysis and policy formation in selected topic areas. 

SOC 50, Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 3 credits — This course introduces students to the history of race and ethnicity in the United States, focusing on the period after 1865. Students will examine the social construction of race and ethnicity, with emphasis on the complex ways in which race and ethnicity have operated within American politics and culture.