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School of Liberal Arts
Mission Statement and Learning Goals

Mission Statement and Learning Goals

The School of Liberal Arts strives to create a dynamic learning community. Engaging in active learning, our students develop critical and creative thinking, informed reason and judgment, a diversity of perspectives, and effective communication skills.

Mission

The mission of the School of Liberal Arts is to engage students with a wide array of intellectually rich and academically rigorous programs in the humanities, social sciences, and arts. Faculty and students work collaboratively in a dynamic learning community, rooted in the Catholic and Franciscan tradition, that challenges students to create a more humble, just, and peaceable world.

Learning Goals

The School of Liberals Arts curriculum empowers students to:

  1. Think critically by questioning assumptions, evaluating evidence, and articulating well-reasoned arguments.
  2. Acquire specialized expertise and understanding in a specific discipline in the arts, humanities or social sciences, as well as intellectual breadth through study across disciplines and different modes of inquiry.
  3. Build a foundational understanding of themselves and their place in the world that encourages reflection, wonder, growth, empathy, responsibility, resilience, and flexibility.
  4. Develop the ability to write and speak confidently and effectively, including artistic forms of expression, and acquire appropriate quantitative and technological capabilities, including information literacy.
  5. Conduct research or fieldwork that engages with diverse perspectives and employs diverse skill sets in order to examine individual and shared assumptions about themselves and the world.
  6. Commit to the Franciscan and Catholic goals of social and environmental justice, and develop strategies to recognize and eliminate oppression and discrimination and to promote a just world and sustainable environment.