Our “Chart Your Course” Program
Are you excited to embark on the journey of a lifetime? To master the real-world skills in the classroom that you help will land you the career of your dreams? As a New College student, you will, with our innovative curriculum: Chart Your Course (CYC).
This signature program, entirely unique to New College, is designed to give you a competitive leg up in the job market—equipping you with transferable skill sets, while inspiring you with intellectually challenging courses. Instead of a one-size-fits-all set of requirements, New College offers students the opportunity to Chart Your Course (CYC).
Want to sharpen your critical-thinking and ethical-reasoning skills, gain civic knowledge and information literacy, or all of the above? With CYC, you will create your own learning plan alongside your faculty adviser, choose from an intuitively searchable course catalog and develop a roadmap that is tailored to your academic and future ambitions.
No matter what you choose to study during your years at New College, you will come away with a broadly-based education and a variety of interdisciplinary skills that transcend professional industries. Today’s workforce needs candidates who are flexible and adaptable to changing trends. So explore your passions, expand your horizons and get ready to Chart Your Course with us.
How does it work?
The CYC program works on two different but intertwined levels: at the same time as you’re taking courses in a broad range of disciplines, you’ll be developing key skills that will help you succeed at New College and beyond. Every CYC course is labeled with the 3 chief skills it teaches, such as problem-solving, intercultural knowledge or writing—so you can search for courses by the skill you want to practice (ex. teamwork) as well as by discipline (ex. anthropology). This makes it easy to choose courses that make the most sense for you, understand what your professors are trying to teach you, and articulate everything you’ve learned along the way.
What are the skills and why are they important?
CYC skills are essential skills that all students need to succeed in work, citizenship and life (here’s how the American Association of Colleges and Universities defines them). Rather than rigid professional training for a single job, CYC will give you a toolbox of techniques to help you succeed at anything you want to do in life. In fact, these techniques are the flexible soft skills most employers are looking for these days (such as Key Skills Employers Want to See on Students’ Resumés and Forbes’ Top Ten Skills Recruiters Are Looking For in 2021).
Every CYC course focuses explicitly on three of these skills, and you have a lot of control over your choices. You can decide to practice a few of these skills in depth, or acquire a broad range of different skills.
CYC Requirements
If you’re a prospective student, or a student who started in or after Fall 2021:
Yes! While students who began before Fall 2021 are still subject to the old Liberal Arts Curriculum (LAC), CYC requirements—a total of 10 total units—apply to all students starting since then.
- Transfer and exam credit, such as AP and IB exams or community college courses, CAN be applied to CYC. (See below for details!)
- You can track your CYC status in the “Student Resources” tab of the Student Evaluation System (SES). This tracks not only what CYC breadth requirements you’ve completed, but tracks which skills your CYC courses have focused on, so you can see which real-world skills you’re building over time.
- This part of the program gives you experience in a variety of disciplines and helps you find passions in areas you might never have explored.
- The Class Schedule labels all CYC courses with a series of attributes. These will tell you:
- whether a given course fulfills CYC requirements;
- which breadth requirements it satisfies (attributes beginning with “CYC Breadth”, e.g. CYC Breadth – Natural Sciences or CYC Breadth – Writing-Enhanced);
- and—for CYC courses only—which skills they will teach.
- If you’re looking at a particular course, these attributes will help you understand what skills that course focuses on and what breadth requirements it fulfills.
- You can also search by skill to help you choose courses that teach the skills you want to practice. Knowing what skills your courses are designed to teach you will help you articulate the kinds of broad skills you’re learning at NCF.
- This part of the program helps you focus on and develop the skills that will best suit you in the future.
- In the process of creating your contract each term, you’ll be asked to reflect on your progress. This required “Reflection” section of the contract asks you to consider: What are you trying to accomplish? What knowledge and skills have you gained, and how will they help you in future? The contract is an opportunity to think back to how you’ve grown and forward to how those experiences will shape your future. You should write this reflection—or at least begin doing so—before meeting with your advisor to plan your courses each term. At the same time, talking with your adviser about your reflection will help you get the most out of your advising experience!
- The Preliminary AOC (PAOC) form, which you will complete in your fifth contract (about halfway through the traditional four years at NCF) will ask you not only to declare an Area of Concentration (AOC), but also to reflect broadly on what you’ve learned and the skills you’ve acquired—where you started, how far you’ve come and where you want to go next.
- This part of the program helps you look both backward and forward, and consider how you can apply your skills in the real world.
- If you have an AA from a Florida state institution, that counts as having completed all CYC requirements. You’re done!
- If you don’t have an AA, or your transfer credits come from a private or out-of-state institution, the Registrar’s Office will make a determination about what credit you will receive based on your existing transcript. This goes for CYC courses as well as contracts and more general transfer credit.
- As a rule, introductory or gen-ed courses from other institutions count to fulfill CYC requirements. The exceptions are Math (where NCF requires trigonometry or higher) and Writing (where NCF requires a course at the 200(0)-level or higher).
CYC for LAC Students
If you’re a continuing student who started at New College before Fall 2021:
No! The requirements of the Liberal Arts Curriculum (LAC) still apply to anyone who started before Fall 2021. These are:
- 8 LAC courses total
- 1 LAC course from each division
- 1 Diverse Perspectives course
- Math requirement
- Writing requirement (fulfilled by completion of the senior thesis and passing your baccalaureate exam)
- Civic Literacy requirement (fulfilled by transfer credit or exam)
As before, you can track your completion of LAC requirements in the “Student Resources” tab of the Student Evaluation System (SES).
- The Class Schedule has been updated. The old system of marking each LAC course with an asterisk is being retired, and all LAC and CYC courses are now trackable using attributes attached to each course. These will tell you:
- whether a given course fulfills LAC and/or CYC requirements;
- and which skills CYC courses will teach.
- If you’re looking at a particular course, these attributes will help you understand what skills that course focuses on and what breadth requirements it fulfills.
- You can also search by skill to help you choose courses that teach the specific skills you want to practice. Knowing what skills your courses are designed to teach you will help you articulate the kinds of broad skills you’re learning at NCF.
- You can also benefit from the skills and reflection elements of CYC:.
- The “Goals” section of the contract has been replaced by a “Reflection”, a required question that explicitly asks you to reflect on your progress: What knowledge and skills have you gained, and how will they help you in future? What are your goals, and what do you still need to work on to accomplish them? The contract is an opportunity to think back to how you’ve grown and forward to how those experiences will shape your future. You should write this reflection—or at least begin doing so—before meeting with your advisor to plan your courses each term. At the same time, talking with your adviser about your reflection will help you get the most out of your advising experience!
- Also, the Preliminary AOC (PAOC) form, which you will complete in your fifth contract (about halfway through the traditional four years at NCF) will ask you not only to declare an Area of Concentration (AOC), but also to reflect broadly on what you’ve learned and the skills you’ve acquired—where you started, how far you’ve come and where you want to go next.
- These elements will help you plan a path that makes sense for you, understand what you’ve learned and how you might apply it in future, and explain your choices to audiences beyond New College.
- About your learning path at New College and how LAC and/or CYC can contribute to your growth >> your faculty advisor.
- About particular LAC and/or CYC courses that you’re interested in taking >> the professors teaching them.
- About what your transfer credit counts for and what requirements you still have to complete >> the Registrar’s Office ([email protected] or 941-487-4230).
Fulfilling CYC Breadth Requirements by Transfer Credit or Exam
Appropriate courses completed through other colleges (including dual-enrollment college courses taken while enrolled in high school) may be used to satisfy CYC breadth requirements, as long as they are deemed eligible for transfer credit by the New College Registrar. The Registrar will work with you to determine which courses completed at other institutions may be appropriate.
Satisfactory performance on Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), Advanced International Certification of Education (AICE), or College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) examinations may be used to meet CYC requirements. In the event that you have taken two different exams on the same subject (i.e. IB and AP, or AICE and AP), credit for only one satisfactory score may be given toward the corresponding CYC requirement.
Click HERE for a full list of exams and scores eligible for CYC credit. Exam scores should appear in your CYC Status Report (under “Student Resources” in the Student Evaluation System). If they do not appear there, it is likely that they have not been correctly received and processed by the Office of the Registrar. Please consult with Registrar’s Office staff and/or check that your scores have been correctly submitted to New College of Florida: many exam results are not automatically transferred as part of your high school transcript.
The CYC Civic Literacy requirement varies according to student cohort. To fulfill this requirement, most students entering after Fall 2021 must pass both a course (either American Government or US History since 1865) AND a test (generally the Florida civic literacy test).
- The following exams fulfill BOTH course and test requirements:
- A score of 3 or higher on the AP exam in US Government and Politics
- A score of 4 or higher on the AP exam in US History
- A score of 50 or higher on the CLEP American Government exam
- The following exams fulfill ONLY the Civic Literacy course requirement; students who have achieved passing scores on these exams must also pass the Florida civic literacy test.
- A score of A-E on the Cambridge AICE AS-Level exam in US History 1789-1917
- A score of 5-7 on the IB exam in History of America
The CYC Mathematics requirement can be fulfilled by any of the following:
- A score of 91 or above on the ACCUPLACER Elementary Algebra exam
- A score of 3 on any Advanced Placement (AP) mathematics exam
- A score of 5 or higher on an International Baccalaureate (IB) mathematics exam
- A score of 50 or higher on a College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) mathematics exam
- A passing score on the mathematics section of the College Level Academic Skills Test taken prior to July 2009
- A passing score on the FTCE General Knowledge Exam mathematics section or a score of 91 or higher on the mathematics portion of the Florida College-Level Entry Placement Test
- A 2.5 grade point average (on a 4.0 scale) in traditional postsecondary-level course work identified by the Florida State Board of Education and Florida Board of Governors as meeting the requirement to demonstrate college-level skills in mathematics. (Contact the Office of the Registrar for details.)
- Six semester credit hour equivalents of mathematics course work completed at another accredited college or university, and deemed eligible toward transfer credit. (Contact the Office of the Registrar for details.)