General Education Signature Courses are courses that distinguish USIU-Africa students from other university students in the world. The courses prepare our students for college life as well as transition from college to the world. These courses intersect with the University’s overall mission by providing students with grounding in higher order thinking, literacy, development of global understanding and multicultural perspective. The courses are for all USIU-Africa undergraduate students. General Education signature courses include:

1. Strategies for University Success
2. Introduction to Research Methods
3. Community Service
4. Senior Integrated Seminar

Strategies for University Success assists students to make the necessary transition from high school and/or the work environment to the university environment. This course is based on the concept of an orientation seminar for college/university students. It communicates the high academic expectations USIU has for students and help them recognize and take advantage of the various university resources that enhance their academic lives as they integrate into university life. It helps students develop, among other things, a clearer understanding of the USIU-Africa culture, mission and vision of the university. It involves critical-thinking-based approaches and clarifies expectations regarding the appropriate approaches to accomplishing a university degree.

Strategies for University Success provide a special space for first-year students to examine their values, beliefs, and attitudes. The emphasis of this course is: taking charge of self, degree requirements, class matters and good study habits, relationships, time and money management, healthy living including diet and exercise as well as drugs and substance abuse, resources available to the student, students’ rights and responsibilities. It exposes students to career planning, development of analytical, critical, and creative thinking skills and reading and communication skills. Case studies help students understand their role in society and the meaning of a university education.

Introduction to Research Methods introduces students to basic concepts and principles of social research. It teaches them the meaning, purpose and characteristics of social research; the major ethical issues governing social research; the research process, including the identification of a research problem, literature search and review, study population and sample selection and the methods of data collection

Community service entails the performance of voluntary activities that benefit a selected community without expectations of payments for time spent. Community service provides students with opprtunites to serve others and develop a sense of responsibility to the larger community. The course aims to offer needed service to communities for the mutual benefit of all parties involved, and to encourage personal involvement, community and personal awareness and responsible leadership. It helps students discover the universal aspects of human nature.It provides opportunities for students to reflect critically on their lived experiences.It sensitize students to various social problems affecting our society and challenge them to critically appraise them using relevant tools and models with the view to suggesting viable solution alternatives.

Senior Integrated Seminar focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge and preparation for a career. This course is an interdisciplinary capstone seminar designed to give students significant insights into important career and life issues that influence their success in life after college. It prepares graduating seniors for the real world outside college by enabling them to draw from a totality of their undergraduate disciplinary and extracurricular learning. It assists the senior students in making connections between disciplines, major, minor, and General Education courses and focuses on the global understanding and multicultural perspectives mission outcome of the USIU-Africa. It deepens the students’ ability to make connections between the diverse academic subjects they have pursued at the University, hence appreciation of the nature of knowledge. It helps the students to take stock of their training at the University and to use that experience outside the classroom (i.e., in the ‘real world’) for their own benefit and that of the society at large. It enables the students to express themselves constructively, in both oral and written forms and prepares the student for a career and/or further/continuing education.