Shared Futures

Stephens College

As Stephens’ Mission Statement explains, the Liberal Arts curriculum grounds all the College’s degree programs, striking an appropriate balance between preparing students for the careers they hope to pursue and educating them for the lives they’ll lead in the twenty-first century. The College provides for all students, regardless of their majors, a women-centered, globally-oriented, ten-course, thirty-credit-hour Liberal Arts Program. Within that program, students take three Core Courses, four Learning Community Courses, and three Choice Courses. All students take required Liberal Arts Program (LBA) courses unless they bring to the College advance placement, international baccalaureate or transfer credit that matches these requirements. All Liberal Arts courses, regardless of the topics they cover, provide opportunities for students to sharpen their critical thinking and communication skills.

In addition to the LBA courses they take to fulfill LBA program requirements, students may take other LBA courses for elective credit. Departments may approve various LBA courses as electives in their majors and minors.  LBA courses may not count as required courses in any major or minor.

LBA PROGRAM

Students take 10 LBA courses:
3 core courses, 4 Learning Community courses, and 3 choice courses.

Core Courses

Freshman Composition—6 credits
Taken the first two semesters in classes of no more than 20 taught by the same instructor both semesters.

• Composition  1
  
• Composition and Research 2—linked with another LBA course.

Sophomore Seminar in Social Science—3-6 credits

Taken during the 2nd year.

• Social Science Core 1: American Government / Macro Economics
  OR/AND

• Social Science Core 2: Human Geography / Global Village

Learning Community Courses

Students take these courses during their first and second years within a mixed-major group of up to 60 students in sections of no more than 30,  with sections scrambled each semester to provide a new mix of students. The specific subject of the content-area courses in each Learning Community may be different although the general titles will remain the same. Learning Communities will offer these courses in various orders to make best use of full-time faculty.

3 credits--Historical Studies  1st or 2nd year

3 credits--Cultural Studies  1st or 2nd year

3 credits--Social Science 1st or 2nd year

3 credits—Literary Studies  2nd year

Choice Courses

3 credits—LBA-Approved Quantitative Literacy Course—taken any year.

3 credits—LBA-Approved Natural Science—taken any year.

3 credits—LBA-Approved Ethics--taken in the  3rd or 4th  year.

General Orientation for All lba Courses

The Stephens faculty has agreed that Liberal Arts Program courses should, where appropriate, include the contributions of women, use gender as a category of analysis, include materials from a variety of cultures, and use pedagogies appropriate for women students.

Goals for Student Learning

In addition, the Stephens faculty has approved for the LBA program student learning goals in skill areas and subject areas.  The skill areas include reading, writing, researching, reasoning, speaking, quantitative literacy, and technical literacy.

Skill Area:  Critical Reading

Skill:  As they move through the program, students should demonstrate the increasing ability to construct meaning from a variety of layered, college-level texts representing a variety of disciplines. Sub-skills include         

• identifying assumptions and main points;
• analyzing and evaluating arguments and supporting evidence;
• identifying rhetorical strategies and intended audiences;
• interpreting tonality and authorial intention; and
• Drawing inferences and conclusions

Skill Area: Student Research  

As they move through the program, students should demonstrate the increasing ability to conduct meaningful research. Sub-skills include      

• discovering and refining research topics;
• gathering relevant information from a number of different primary and secondary sources;
• evaluating the credibility and usefulness of a variety of research sources;
• preparing an annotated bibliography;
• using research information in appropriate ways;
• discriminating between library reports and researched essays;
• using appropriate conventions of documentation; and
• abiding by the principles of academic honesty.

Skill Area:  Writing

As they move through the program, students should demonstrate the increasing ability to write competently in a variety of contexts. Sub-skills include

• using writing for inquiry, discovery, learning, thinking, and communicating;
• approaching writing assignments as tasks that may include finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources;
• integrating their own ideas with ideas derived from their textual research, from their classmates, and from outside sources;
• treating their subject matter as a complex, rich, and potentially problematic field of investigation;
• writing in a number of different rhetorical and professional modes including exposition, narrative, argument, and report;
• using a variety of pre-writing, drafting, re-writing, and editing strategies;
• controlling surface features including syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling;
• considering audience; and
• adopting appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality.

Skill Area:  Critical Thinking

As they move through the program, students should demonstrate the increasing ability to reason and think critically.  Sub-skills include

• identifying, analyzing, and evaluating arguments;
• querying evidence, conjecturing alternatives, and drawing conclusions;
• stating results and justifying procedures;
• presenting valid arguments; and
• examining their own reasoning processes and making necessary corrections.

Skill Area:  Quantitative Literacy

As they move through the program, students should demonstrate an increasing ability to apply simple mathematical methods to the solution of real-world problems. Sub-skills include:

• interpreting mathematical models such as formulas, graphs, tables, and schematics, and drawing inferences from them;
• representing mathematical information symbolically, visually, numerically, and verbally;
• using arithmetical, algebraic, geometric or statistical methods to solve problems;
• estimating and checking answers to mathematical problems in order to determine reasonableness, identify alternatives, and select optimal results; and
• recognizing the limits of mathematical and statistical methods.

Skill Area:  Technical Literacy

As they move through the program, students should demonstrate their increasing technical literacy. Sub-skills include

• using digital technology to access, organize, analyze, and present information; and
• using digital technology to express ideas, narratives, and images.

(Demonstrated through digital film-making, data base research, participation in web-based or web-enhanced course work, and making digitally-supported presentations.)

Skill Area:  Speaking 

As they move through the program, students should demonstrate the increasing ability to make good use of their voices for the purposes of oral communication.

Sub-skills include

• composing and delivering effective oral presentations;
• using delivery techniques suitable to the topic, purpose, and audience; and
• engaging in active and respectful listening strategies.

LBA Courses and Subject-Area Student Learning Goals

As they move through the LBA program, students sharpen their skills these areas while learning about the world from the perspectives of the social sciences, the natural sciences, cultural studies, historical studies, literary studies, and ethics in the following courses:

LBA Composition 1 (3 hrs.)

The first semester of a two-semester sequence, this course provides students with a wide range of opportunities to sharpen their reading, writing, research, reasoning, and digital media skills.  At the same time, the course also encourages students to develop, in both their writing and their speaking, their own distinct and identifiable voice.  The format of the course includes guest speakers, class discussions, small group presentations, individual presentations, formal and informal papers, writing exercises, and peer review.

LBA Composition and Research 2 (3 hrs.)

In LBA Composition and Research 2, students continue to sharpen their skills in critical reading, writing, researching, and reasoning, with an additional focus on learning to make good use their speaking voices. Composition and Research 2 links closely with the other Liberal Arts Program course offered in the student’s Learning Community, supporting and enriching the reading, research, and writing required in the linked course.

 LBA Historical Studies (3 hrs.)

LBA Historical Studies courses cover a range of topics in History.  Recent courses have focused on American Popular Culture, American Environmental History, and The American Dream. All LBA Historical Studies courses help students learn to view the human experience through the lens of history. Student learning sub-skills include

• recognizing that the past has a profound influence on the present; 
• understanding that the past can be adequately described by no single version of events but only by many of them, each reflecting valid  experiences, perspectives, and values;
• understanding the investigative techniques common to historiography;
• realizing that the future advancement of women grows in part from the       study of women in history.

LBA Cultural Studies (3 hrs.)

LBA Cultural Studies courses cover a range of topics in areas such as art history, aesthetics, film studies, and music. Recent titles include Seven Pleasures, an aesthetics course, Ancient Mysteries, a history of archeology, and The Sacred Muse, a course in sacred music from around the world. All LBA Cultural Studies courses help students become acquainted with the arts and learn to appreciate the world of the creative imagination as a form of knowledge.  Student learning sub-skills include:

• understanding the arts in terms of historical, cultural and political contexts;
• becoming familiar with a wide range of styles, forms, techniques and conventions, from Western and non-Western traditions;
• developing powers of description and criticism, both written and spoken;
• recognizing connections between disciplines; and
• preparing themselves to participate in the artistic life of their communities.

LBA Social Science (3 hrs)

LBA Social Science courses cover topics in areas such as psychology, sociology, and women’s studies.  Recent titles include The Psychology of Creativity, Peacemaking in the Modern World, and Global Terrorism. All LBA Social Science Courses give students opportunities to increase their ability to understand and generate explanations for human behavior in a social context. Student learning sub-skills include

• identifying major theories of human behavior and motivation;
• understanding the influence of the social and physical environments on human thought and action; and
• understanding the investigative techniques common to the social sciences.

LBA Literary Studies (3 hrs.)

LBA Literary Studies courses focus on a range of literary topics.  Recent courses include Border Literature of the American Southwest, Coming of Age Literature,  International Contemporary Novels, and Short Fiction from Around the World. All LBA Literary Studies courses help students increase their ability to view the human experience through the lens of literature. Student learning sub-skills include

• demonstrating an introductory-level awareness of a variety of methods for reading and appreciating literary texts;
• understanding a range of conventions of literary production;
• developing an awareness of the ways literary texts emerge from the social and political conditions of their times; and
• identifying and accounting for possible differences between  the student’s own cultural, theoretical, and historical standpoints and those of a studied literary text.

Social Science Core Courses

The Social Science Core Courses (1 and 2) sit at the center of the LBA program’s challenge to help students learn about the world and the enormously important role governments/economics play in that world.  On the skill side, the LBA program helps students sharpen their reading, writing, researching, reasoning, and speaking skills.  The Social Science Core Courses accomplish these skill goals by requiring intensive research, writing, and presentation projects. Coming in the second year, the Social Science Core Courses continue the skill-building work begun during the first-year LBA courses.

Social Science Core Areas of Study

• Human Geography / The Global Village: an interdisciplinary, internationally- focused course that brings together physical geography, anthropology, political science, history, cultural studies, economics.
• American Government / Macroeconomics:  an interdisciplinary course that helps student understand the interlocking nature of government, economic, and corporations, with special emphasis on the role of the United States in the world economy.

Scheduling, Format, and Faculty Involvement

Social Science Core Courses are taught--one in the fall and the other in the spring--in the MWF  time block with group lectures on Monday and Wednesday, and small (15-student) breakout sections meeting on Fridays. Varying the delivery format of LBA courses benefits students by giving them some choices and opportunities to pick research sections based on interest area rather than necessarily staying with their Learning Communities. The lecture/breakout section format also lets more Stephens faculty participate in the LBA program.

Symposia

The various project sections will present the findings of their research at the end of each semester in "The Sophomore Symposia," affording students the opportunity to sharpen their skills in making technology-supported presentations to large audiences.

LBA-Approved Quantitative Literacy (3hrs.)

LBA-Approved Quantitative Literacy courses carry the prefix of their home department, such as Mathematics or Business.  The Stephens faculty has recently offered LBA-Approved quantitative literacy courses in College Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers, Statistics, and Personal Finance. All LBA-Approved Quantitative Literary courses meet the LBA skill-area goals outlined above.

LBA-Approved Natural Science (3 hrs.)

LBA-Approved Natural Science courses carry the prefix of their home department.  The Natural Science faculty offers courses in biology, botany, chemistry, and physics.  Recently natural science faculty have offered LBA-approved courses in Biological Concepts, How Things Work, and Crime Scene Investigation.  All LBA-Approved natural science courses help students understand and apply the methods and constructs of science.  Student learning sub-skills include

• understanding and being able to apply the scientific method;
• using scientific terminology and scientific units;
• understanding the uses of scientific knowledge;
• using  presentation strategies appropriate to the sciences; and  
• analyzing interactions and relationships among individuals, society, and technology, especially in the ethical realm.

LBA and LBA-Approved Ethics (3 hrs.)

All LBA and LBA-Approved ethics courses help students increase their ability and willingness to act for the sake of others by seeing beyond provincial values and adolescent relativism and by adopting values based on rational and non-provincial grounds. Student learning sub-skills include

• identifying and critiquing  provincial moral values;
• identifying and critiquing moral theories; and
• originating rational moral values.

The LBA program is currently developing a senior-level course in the ethics of globalization.

 Global Reform Effort Target Areas

This year and next, our Liberal Arts Program team will take up the following projects:

• Putting the finishing touches on our sophomore seminar course, The Global Village, which we will teach for the first time in Spring 2006.
• Designing an upper-division, required LBA course in the Ethics of Globalization.  This course will make use of the College’s endowed lecture series on ethics and religion and, we hope, include students from the other two institutions of higher education in our city--the University of Missouri, Columbia, and Columbia College—as well as our own juniors and seniors. We will offer this course for the first time during the spring semester of 2007. 
• Hiring a new full-time faculty member to teach world history in the LBA program and helping that person design appropriate LBA Historical Studies Courses.
• Internationalizing our LBA Natural Science Courses.
• Helping the Liberal Arts Program involve the entire Stephens community—including alumnae. 
• Further integrating faculty from various majors, especially from the College’s new digital film making department, into the LBA program.
• Helping to revive the foreign language programs at the College.
• Designing a new major in Latin American Studies.
• Increasing opportunities for students to study and travel abroad.