Degree Requirements
There are 84 credit hours required in the Liberal Studies Program as part of the Bachelor of Arts degree in a Modern Language. Depending on math placements, 32 to 36 quarter hours in the core and 48 to 52 quarter hours distributed through six learning domains. The number and distribution of courses in each area are as follows:
Core:
32 or 36 quarter hours required as follows:
- First Year Program: 16 quarter hours required as follows: four quarter hours in Discover Chicago or Explore Chicago, four quarter hours in Focal Point Seminars and eight quarter hours in Composition and Rhetoric.
- Mathematical and Technological Literacy: four or eight quarter hours required, depending on placement.
- Sophomore Seminar: four quarter hours required. Sophomore Seminar on Multiculturalism in the United States.
- Junior Year Experiential Learning: four quarter hours required. If your junior year experiential learning requirement also fulfills a major field requirement, you may substitute a liberal studies domain elective (from outside your major field area) or the third course in the modern language option for this requirement.
- Senior Capstone: four quarter hours required. If you are double majoring and/or in the Honors program you must also follow the capstone guidelines for that area. If the capstone is optional in the other areas, you can elect which capstone to complete.
Learning Domains:
48 or 52 quarter hours required as follows. Students who complete eight credits of mathematical and technological literacy will replace one course from any one of the six Learning Domains with the second course in the sequence (ISP 121), as long as they take at least one course in each domain.
- Arts and Literature: four quarter hours required.
- Philosophical Inquiry: eight quarter hours required.
- Religious Dimensions: eight quarter hours required; four quarter hours in religious and ethical questions, and four quarter hours in religious traditions.
- Scientific Inquiry: 12 quarter hours required; four quarter hours with a lab component, four quarter hours with a quantitative component and four quarter hours of scientific inquiry elective.
- Self, Society and the Modern World: 12 quarter hours required. At most two courses from the same department or program.
- Understanding the Past: eight quarter hours required. Courses must be from two different categories: 1) Asia, 2) Latin America, 3) Africa, 4) North America, 5) Europe and 6) intercontinental or comparative.
Although study in a modern language contributes to a student's liberal education, courses offered by the department of modern languages are not applied towards liberal studies requirements for a modern language first major. Exceptions to this rule are the junior experiential learning and the senior capstone requirements. In addition, students majoring in one modern language may use the Modern Language Option for study of a second language at the intermediate level or above.
