Liberal studies are finally a reality at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
The program has been approved by the System Board of Regents giving students an opportunity for students who had many hours of different classes, a cohesive way to get a degree, according to Dr. Derek Royal, director of liberal studies.
“This degree will allow students who have changed their majors multiple times a way to use all of the courses that they have had,” Royal said. “There are not as many hours required and the classes that they take do not all have to be in the same field.”
Students studying the degree have all of the same core classes that are required for all degrees, but the majors and minors are different and allow students to choose the classes that they wish to take.
“Students do have a concentration and a complementary field but instead of these being one subject, they can be organized into various studies,” Royal said.
According to the A&M-Commerce Web site, there are currently three concentrations besides traditional studies that students can choose to fulfill their degree requirements.
“We have put together child and family studies, global and multicultural issues, and ways of seeing and knowing,” Royal said.
The child and family studies consists of several nutrition, early childhood education, psychology and sociology classes, while the ways of seeing and knowing include more art, history, philosophy and psychology classes.
Students are also required to take four liberal studies courses, which include introduction to liberal studies (CAS 300), methods of discovery (CAS 310), theories of interdisciplinary study (CAS 320), and senior seminar (CAS 400).
“The first of these classes are being offered for the first time in the fall 2008 semester,” Royal said. “Dr. Stewart will be teaching the methods of discovery class based around the text of Frankenstein, which I find very interesting,” Royal said.
“The class will be held online, which will be very helpful for students,” Dr. Susan Stewart, assistant professor for literature and languages, said. “Certain classes facilitate the needs of students better than others do online, but in this cases I think that it will be a helpful online class.”
The class will use the text of Frankenstein to look at the way those different events in the world impact the way that people look at the world in different disciplines, Stewart said.
“An example of this would be Freud and the way that we look at the human psyche and also the changes that were made in the way we analyze literature because of him,” Stewart said.
The class will use the text of Frankenstein to research what has been written about it from different disciplines including medical, psychological and historical.
“Basically, I want students to be able to engage in a study of different disciplines,” Stewart said. “Classes such as these create more knowledge and allow students to synthesize the knowledge that they have already gained.”
Stewart’s method of discovery class is now open for registration for the fall semester.
Another requirement for the liberal studies degree is that students have two semesters of a foreign language and that if students do choose a traditional discipline that it is housed within the college of arts and science.
“This degree program will help meet the needs of many kinds of people who want to get a bachelor’s degree,” Dr. James Klein, dean of college of arts and science, said. “For students who have attended several institutions, it values previous work. It also offers convenience with a number of on-line courses and hybrid courses that use technology to reduce class meeting time.”