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There are two components to the Liberal Studies Program.
The first, called the Common
Core, emphasizes communication, quantitative skills
and intellectual abilities, as well as an introduction to
the urban and Vincentian nature of the University. Integration
of the general education program is further enhanced by
a series of common experiences throughout the student's
educational career. These experiences include the
first year program; the
sophomore seminar on multiculturalism in the United States;
the junior year experiential
learning requirement; and the
senior year capstone seminar.
The second part of the program,
called Learning Domains,
is concerned mainly with the subjects that make up the conventional
liberal arts and sciences curriculum. Breadth of learning
is assured by asking students to do course work in six learning
domains: Arts
and Literature (AL); Philosophical
Inquiry (PI);
Religious Dimensions (RD); Scientific Inquiry
(SI);
Self, Society, and the Modern World (MW); and Understanding the Past (UP);
.
The domains of the Liberal Studies
Program represent possible ways of grouping the various
kinds of courses taught in the University. They identify
and focus attention on areas of inquiry that are significantly
similar are to be found, though not all activities carried
on within a domain are identical. A person who has received
a liberal education has experienced in both practical and
theoretical ways the many types of intellectual inquiry
represented in the university community. These particular
domains facilitate that experience. They represent society’s
intellectual life in its theoretical, practical, and artistic
moments.
Through the programs of study
within the domains, students are invited to create or discover
for themselves, however provisionally, a map of the intellectual
world.
Finally, pre-collegiate skills
in communication and computation are a prerequisite for
domain study. Some students are required to take certain
skills courses before they can begin the Liberal Studies
Program. Moreover, since these writing and computation skills
are an integral part of all college work, all liberal studies
courses seek to develop these skills further.
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