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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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