Understand, analyze, appreciate, and affect your world.
An education in the liberal arts and sciences will enable you to understand your world, and it will equip you to analyze, appreciate, and affect that world. With these aims in mind, the faculty at Worcester State University have designed the university’s liberal arts and sciences curriculum to ensure breadth both in the range of subjects you will encounter and in the range of approaches to that material. In addition, the curriculum emphasizes the fundamental abilities and attitudes that make it possible to benefit fully from a liberal education. While the specialization provided by major and minor fields of study is essential to a college education, the breadth and integration provided by the liberal arts and sciences curriculum supply an invaluable context for understanding the wider world.
Given the crucial importance of languages other than English in today’s global society, the university strongly encourages the study of world languages through the majors and minors and through combining the requirements in global perspectives and thought, language, and culture. You may also choose to study languages through your elective courses.
What you will do:
- Demonstrate effective oral and written communication
- Employ quantitative and qualitative reasoning
- Apply skills in critical thinking
- Apply skills in information literacy
- Display an appreciation for the interrelations among global and cross-cultural communities
- Develop a critical understanding of the US experience
- Understand the roles of science and technology in the modern world
- Demonstrate and value personal creative expression
- Understand how scholars in various disciplines approach problems and construct knowledge
- Display socially responsible behavior and act as a socially responsible agent in the world
- Make connections across courses and disciplines
- Develop as a healthy individual—physically, emotionally, socially, ethically, and intellectually
Requirements
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Core Course Requirements
Core courses may not double with content area course requirements.
Content Area Course Requirements
You will complete courses in nine content areas.
- Creative Arts (CA)
- Diversity (DIV)
- Human Behavior and Social Processes (HBS)
- Individual and Community Well-being (ICW)
- Global Perspectives (GP)
- Natural Systems and Processes (NSP)
- Natural Systems and Processes (LAB)
- Non-approved LASC lab (NLL) courses do not meet the requirement for a LASC LAB course
- Natural Systems and Processes (LAB)
- Quantitative Reasoning (QR)
- Thought, Language, and Culture (TLC)
- The United States and Its Role in the World (USW)
- In addition to meeting the 40-credit liberal arts and sciences curriculum (LASC) requirements for all undergraduates, liberal studies majors complete a minimum of 39 credits from 2 areas of study.
The first area (18-27 credits) must be completed in an established minor at Worcester State University.
The second area (15 or more credits) may be another of the University’s established minors, a concentration, or a self-designed cluster of classes. A maximum of 18 credits may be transferred in to this second area of the major.
At least 9 credits in your 2 areas must be at the 300-level or above. The program of study plan must reflect that at least 51 percent of the major credits are taken at Worcester State University. To receive a baccalaureate degree from Worcester State University, you must complete 30 of the last 40 credits at Worcester State University.
Students who have completed 30 credits between areas 1 and 2 of their program of study may enroll in the capstone.
Each liberal studies major is required to maintain an e-portfolio of work produced in the student’s various courses, beginning in LS-190 and culminating in LS-490.
Evening students: Students wishing to declare a liberal studies major may, depending on the chosen areas of study, complete the required courses in the evening or during the summer.
Honors program: Liberal studies majors with a 3.3 GPA or higher who wish to graduate with honors may add a 3-credit research project, creative work/portfolio, or thesis to the individualized plan of study.
Students are required to meet with their academic advisor to review their courses for the upcoming semester. A minimum of 120 credits is required for graduation. First-year and transfer students with 45 or fewer credits at the time of admission shall complete 2 academic programs (a major/major or major/minor) to qualify for graduation. For more information, please view the MajorPlus section of the catalog. -
The following are the default transfer equivalences. When courses transfer into specific Worcester State courses, they carry specific liberal arts and sciences curriculum (LASC) designations; however, the transferred courses will meet LASC requirements in the same way as the courses into which they have transferred.
- Mathematics courses will be transferred as QR for maximum of 6 credits in LASC
- Science courses in physics, chemistry, biology, and geosciences transfer as NSP for a maximum of 7 credits. A lab science course transfers as a NSP lab course
- Psychology, economics, political science, anthropology, cultural geography, sociology, and education courses transfer as HBS for a maximum of 3 credits
- Philosophy, literature, religion, communication (theory), and language courses transfer as TLC for a maximum of 3 credits
- Art, communication (applied), music, and theatre courses transfer as CA for a maximum of 3 credits
- Health and nutrition courses transfer as ICW for a maximum of 3 credits
- History courses transfer as USW, GP or TLC for a maximum of 6 credits
- All other transfer courses will be reviewed individually by the LASC program chair, in consultation with appropriate academic departments, the LASC Advisory Board, or the associate vice president for Academic Affairs
Major and Minor Courses Counting Toward LASC
- For students who entered Worcester State prior to fall 2021, courses in the liberal arts and sciences curriculum may not be used to meet the primary requirements of a first major, but may be used to satisfy the requirements of a second major or a minor
- Students who entered Worcester State in fall 2021 or later, that is, those under MajorPlus, may apply up to 3 courses approved for different LASC requirements from their first major toward LASC requirements. All courses in a second major or any minor that meet LASC requirements are eligible for LASC credit.