Sixth College
Culture, Art, and Technology Courses, Curricula and Program of Instruction
Sixth College, the newest of UCSD’s six undergraduate college draws on its theme, Culture, Art, and Technology, to meet the lifelong educational needs of students in the twenty-first century. New global challenges demand new approaches to visualization, problem solving, information handling, and communication across cultural and disciplinary boundaries. Intellectual flexibility, creative, critical thinking, ethical judgment, fluency in assessing and adapting to technological change and the ability to engage effectively in collaboration with others from a wide range of backgrounds will be critically important to our graduates. To help prepare our students for the future, Sixth College offers an integrated learning environment that emphasizes collaborative learning, creative imagination, interdisciplinary inquiry, and written, visual, kinetic and auditory investigation, argument, and expression. Students will learn to use digital as well as traditional communication and research tools. The college is committed to help students develop skills necessary for lifelong learning, including self-reflection with information technology and the crucial ability to learn from experts.
Sixth College offers students opportunities to explore its theme, Culture, Art, and Technology, both within its academic program and through non-classroom based programs that provide our students with learning, work, and research experiences both on and off campus.
Sixth College challenges students to examine the multidimensional interactions between culture, art, and technology, in order to imagine the future and create new forms of inquiry and communication. Teamwork, artistic expression, interdisciplinary ways of thinking and knowing, and multicultural awareness are core educational goals.
Sixth College students will be encouraged to engage with the outlying community through the practicum. More than an ethical obligation to service, such an engagement is integral to the process of learning to listen across cultures and to consider implications of diverse agencies of change. Sixth College is committed to pioneer meaningful application of evolving technologies inside and outside the classroom. For example, wireless communication technology is incorporated into the very design of this college’s physical infrastructure and curricular planning, allowing Sixth College to pioneer radically new teaching, communication, community, and lifelong learning paradigms. On campus and off, students will be linked in many ways—by digital media, by team-based course and extracurricular projects and learning exercises, by social and local community engagement (e.g., practicum project), and by diverse cultural and intellectual events that seamlessly connect many aspects of residential life and student affairs programming with the college curriculum. All these linkages help ensure that Sixth College students have the opportunity to develop, learn, and act as integral members of a sustaining local and larger community.
Culture, Art, and Technology
All students will take a three-quarter core sequence titled Culture, Art, and Technology (CAT). CAT is a highly interdisciplinary sequence integrating learning in arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and engineering. It introduces students to thinking across disciplines so they can identify interactions, recognize patterns, and provide opportunities for learning by inquiry in a collaborative environment. Exercises and instruction that develop fluency with information technology and information literacy, as well as writing and communication skills, will be embedded in the core sequence.
Practicum
Sixth College Practicum is an academic learning experience in which students address a real-world problem by undertaking a project. Under faculty mentorship, the students plan, execute, and reflect upon the project and its effectiveness. The practicum reflects Sixth College’s commitment to form bridges within the UCSD campus units and to San Diego’s communities, to engage students in communal issues and to foster students’ ethical obligation to service. Such an engagement is an integral part of the process of learning to listen across cultures and to consider the implications of various agencies of change.
General-Education Requirements
The Sixth College breadth requirements have three primary goals: (1) to produce breadth of knowledge and connections across that breadth, (2) to encourage creative imagination, and (3) to accomplish these activities from an ethically informed perspective. The aim is to allow students to discover the richness of UCSD's academic life and to see relationships among the sciences, social sciences, engineering, arts, and the humanities. Because Sixth College emphasizes cross-disciplinary ways of thinking, it is critical for students to appreciate the different modes of inquiry within academic disciplines. For information about courses available to satisfy the general-education requirements, please visit the academic advising office in the Sixth Administration Building or check the Web site at sixth.ucsd.edu.
- Culture, Art, and Technology: Three courses. Core Sequence CAT 1, 2, and 3. Includes two (6 unit) quarters of intensive instruction in university-level writing.
- Information Technology Fluency: One course. This requirement may be satisfied with courses from a variety of departments.
- Modes of Inquiry: Seven courses. Two courses in social sciences, two courses in humanities, two courses in natural sciences, one course in math/logic (different options available for science and non-science majors).
- Understanding Data: One course in statistical methods (different options available for science and non-science majors).
- Societal and Ethical Contexts: Two courses. One course in ethnic or gender studies AND one course in ethics.
- Art Making: Two courses in literature, music, theatre (including dance), or visual arts.
- Practicum: Upper-division students must complete a Practicum Project that extends outside the classroom, for which they will receive four units of credit. They must also take the Practicum Reflective Writing course, in which they write about their Practicum Project experience.See the Sixth College advising center for details.
Graduation Requirements
In order to graduate from Sixth College all students must:
- Satisfy the University of California requirements in Entry Level Writing
and American History and Institutions (See Academic Regulations: Entry Level
Writing Requirement; and American History and Institutions).
- Satisfy the general-education requirements, including the practicum and the
practicum writing requirement.
- Successfully complete a major according to all regulations of that department.
- Complete at least 60 units at the upper-division level.
- Pass at least 180 units for the B.A./B.S. degree. No more than 3 units in
physical education (activity) courses may count toward graduation.
- Attain a C average (2.0) or better in all work attempted at the UC. Departmental
requirements may differ. Students are responsible for checking with the department
of the major for all regulations.
- Meet the senior residence requirement. (See Academic Regulations: Senior Residence).
Transfer Students
Transfer students may meet all or most of Sixth College’s lower-division requirements before entering UCSD if they have followed transfer agreements or preparation programs. Specific details regarding appropriate general-education agreements are in the catalog section on “Undergraduate Admissions.” Additional resources of information for transfer students include UCSD Transfer Services, the Sixth College Web site, and the student’s community college.
Majors and Minors
Majors: Sixth College students may pursue any of the departmental
or interdisciplinary majors offered at UCSD. The majority of the academic departments
have established lower-division prerequisites. Generally, these prerequisites
must be completed prior to entry into upper-division major courses. Many of these
courses may count for general-education credit as well. Students are strongly
encouraged to work closely with department faculty and college advisors. For
details on the specific major departments, refer to the "Courses, Curricula,
and Programs of Instruction" section of this catalog.
Minors are optional. However, students are encouraged to keep as many
options open as possible. A minor provides an excellent opportunity to complement
the major field of study. Students are required to complete twenty-eight units
of interrelated work, of which at least twenty units must be upper-division.
Pass/Not Pass Grading Option
Some general-education requirements may be fulfilled by courses taken on the Pass/Not Pass basis. Sixth College students are reminded that major requirements and prerequisites must be taken on a graded basis. In accordance with University Academic Regulations, the total number of Pass/Not Pass units may not exceed one-fourth of a student’s total UCSD units.
Honors
In addition to the College Honors Program (see under Sixth College), there are many types of Honors at UCSD.
- Provost Honors—awarded each quarter based on completion of twelve graded units with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. For each year of Provost’s Honors, a certificate of merit is awarded.
- Departmental Honors—Outstanding students often enroll in departmental honors programs, and they may receive university honors at graduation. They may also be eligible to be invited to membership by the UCSD chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest, most respected academic honor society.
- College Honors designation at graduation—College honors awarded include: summa cum laude, magna cum laude, and cum laude.
Expanding Your Educational Horizons
Chicano/a—Latino/a Arts and Humanities (CLAH) Minor
Sixth College sponsors the CLAH minor at UCSD, which encourages students to examine the art, literature, history, music, theater, and language of Spanish-speaking people in the United States, from the nineteenth century to the present. This minor is open to all UCSD students in good standing. Two years or equivalent college-level Spanish language instruction (may include one lower-division language course) are required.
Leadership and Community
Collaboration and connectedness are central values of Sixth College. These values are reflected in Sixth’s commitment to providing meaningful opportunities for students to contribute to the direction and evolution of UCSD’s youngest college. Student leadership opportunities include serving on the Sixth College Student Council or in campus-wide student governance roles. Additionally, students assume leadership in the Sixth community through service as resident advisors, orientation leaders, and members of the Sixth College Executive Committee. These opportunities and others not only contribute to shaping what Sixth College is and will become, but also foster in students the development of life skills that prepare them to be effective citizens and leaders in a world of ever increasing complexity and diversity.
Undergraduate Research
Research opportunities for undergraduates at UCSD
UCSD encourages all undergraduates to become involved in the research life of the university. Every academic department has opportunities for undergraduates to work with faculty on the cutting edge research projects for which UCSD is world-renowned. Working closely with faculty, students will deepen their knowledge and skills in areas of special academic interest, while experiencing what it means to be part of an intellectual community engaged in research. Information can be found through Undergraduate Research at UCSD: http://ugr.ucsd.edu; Academic Enrichment Program: http://aep.ucsd.edu/, and Summer Research Opportunities: http://sea.ucsd.edu/summer_research/
Pacific Rim Undergraduate Experiences (PRIME)
http://www.pragma-grid.net/PRU/index.htm
This undergraduate research program provides opportunities to participate in an international research and cultural experience that will prepare students for the global workplace of the twenty-first century. Students will live and work at an international host site either in Japan, Taiwan, China, or Australia, and gain greater cultural understanding of a new region.
California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2)
Ensures that California maintains its leadership in the rapidly changing telecommunications and information technology marketplace. The institute encourages undergraduate participation in its research activities and provides undergraduate summer research scholarships.
Community Work
TIES (Teams in Engineering Service)
TIES is a new and innovative academic program putting UCSD undergraduates and their technical and creative skills to work for San Diego non-profit organizations. Multidisciplinary teams of UCSD students design, build, and deploy projects that solve technology-based problems for community partners.
PAL (Partners at Learning)
http://tep.ucsd.edu/service.shtm
PAL is the service-learning division of UCSD’s Teacher Education Program. PAL classes give UCSD students meaningful opportunities to learn about and experience issues of equity and education in San Diego’s K–12 schools. Through PAL, UCSD students serve as tutors and mentors in K–12 classrooms throughout San Diego County. Each year PAL students contribute about 20,000 hours of service to underserved schools.
Cultural Enrichment
The Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA)
CRCA is an organized research unit of UCSD whose mission is to facilitate the invention of new art forms that arise out of the developments of digital technologies. Current areas of interest include interactive networked multimedia, virtual reality, computer-spatialized audio, and live performance techniques for computer music and graphics. Through Sixth College’s partnership with CRCA students have opportunities to participate in special events, meet artists, and engage in research.
ArtPower
Artpower!, administered through the University Events Office, brings to the UCSD campus world artists in a wide variety of genres, including music, dance, and the spoken word. Sixth College has developed a partnership with ArtPower!, providing students with opportunities to connect to and engage with professional artists in a variety of formal and informal activities.
Programs Abroad Office (PAO)
Through the Programs Abroad Office, students can take advantage of a variety of international opportunities, including study, work, volunteer, and internship programs abroad! Each year UCSD sends about 1,000 students overseas. Students may choose from the University of California’s systemwide Education Abroad Program (EAP) that has educational opportunities in thirty-five countries, or from the Opportunities Abroad Program (OAP) that links students with worldwide opportunities sponsored by organizations and universities other than the University of California.
Professional Preparation
Academic Internship Program (AIP)
The program offers qualified juniors and seniors the opportunity to acquire valuable work experience related to academic and career interests. Although most internships are in the San Diego area, the Academic Internship Program is national in scope, including the popular Washington, D.C. program, and international, including the London program. An extensive library lists more than 2,000 available internships in varied settings including, but not limited to, TV and radio stations, law offices, medical research labs and clinics, government agencies, high-tech and biotech companies, engineering, advertising and public relations firms, and financial institutions. Students also can work with the internship office to set up their own positions.
Departmental Internships
Most departments offer internships for their majors; the courses are numbered 197 (see individual departments for additional information).
