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What form of undergraduate education best prepares students to live in a
rapidly changing world? What curricular structure best provides students
with the critical skills necessary for civic and economic leadership,
while instilling the reflective, evaluative and comparative habits of mind and
heart integral to the tradition of the liberal arts?
How best can a college help students develop the
rigorous competencies required by a complex world of work while
fostering the
thoughtful exploration and articulation of values and perspectives that
ground a fulfilling life?
The academic program
at Monmouth College is our distinctive answer to these questions. We offer a curriculum that
nourishes personal growth and prepares our students
for professional success. We offer opportunities for intellectual
exploration and discovery. We intend that the liberal arts education we
provide will greatly assist our students to live meaningful and
productive lives. In addition, we ask ourselves and our students to respond to an essential paradox of being
in the world: namely, that we achieve the greatest measure of individual
freedom, the fullest realization of our individual humanity, in the larger
context of social responsibilities.
Our curriculum is both intentional and integrated.
It is ordered into component parts:
Foundation Skills, Integrated Studies, Area Studies, the Major, and
Electives. Although each of these elements has its specific purpose,
together they provide a structure that guides students toward the goals of
a liberal education: to think critically, to communicate effectively, to
appreciate the varieties of human experience and achievement, to
articulate and develop ethical values, to pursue expertise in a
discipline, and to discover patterns of meaning across disciplines.
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The Semester Calendar
The academic year at Monmouth is organized into two semesters. In each
semester, students ordinarily take 15 to 16 credits. The first semester
begins in late August, ending before the Christmas holidays. The second
semester begins in late January, ending in mid-May. Depending on the
credit value of each course, students might anticipate taking between four
and six courses each semester. Most courses meet for three 50-minute
periods or two 75-minute periods a week, with laboratory or studio courses
having additional sessions. Individual courses are worth one to eight
semester hours.
The General Education Program
One of the qualities that has long made Monmouth College distinctive is
its commitment to a four-year general education program. General Education
provides the larger context of knowledge and human experience, raises
questions of meaning and value, and provides a basis for judging the
purposes and methods of particular disciplines. General Education commits
undergraduates and the entire campus to life-long learning through course
work that promotes purposeful inquiry into those activities, forms, and
institutions that define our humanity and that identify significant areas
of cultural agreement and difference among us. The components of our
General Education program are Foundation Skills, Integrated Studies, and
Area Studies.
I. Foundation Skills
Throughout a student’s academic career – indeed, throughout a person’s
whole life – effective communication and quantitative literacy are
essential tools for analysis and understanding. A Monmouth College
education begins with Foundations Skills, where language and reasoning are
intentionally integrated through Communication Across the Curriculum (CAC)
and Quantitative Reasoning Across the Curriculum (QAC) programs. The goals
of such integration are comprehensive, involving instruction,
reinforcement, and elaboration across the curriculum, from Integrated
Studies general education courses to classical and modern foreign
languages to major courses. Always before us, then, is the understanding
that skills in writing and reading, speaking, listening, and
quantification, underwrite academic success and successful personal and
professional lives. Students begin with CATA 101, Fundamentals of
Communication, and ENGL 110, Composition and Argument, during the first
year.
II. Integrated Studies
Introduction
to Liberal Arts
Our Integrated Studies program begins with Introduction to Liberal Arts.
We meet first-year students in the midst of the transition between high
school and college. Guided by an instructor who is professor, mentor, and
the students’ academic advisor, the course addresses the purposes of
liberal and collegiate education by examining a single topic or theme from
a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The aim is to identify and
celebrate the liberal arts as a community of learners excited by the
informed exchange of ideas. Although all sections share common objectives,
foundation skills goals, common core readings, and a common theme, each
section is enhanced by the instructor’s distinctive emphasis.
Global
Perspectives
Once our students have found their new place in the world of higher
education, we ask them in the second year to turn attention to their place
in the larger world: to investigate communities, societies, political
systems, and civilizations other than their own. How are we to understand
a complex and changing world and its peoples, where events unfold and are
chronicled with ever-increasing speed? Global Perspectives addresses this
question by highlighting the influence and importance of cultural
differences and by asking students to understand culture as a lens through
which we view the world. Inherent in this process is fostering critical
thinking about the students’ own place in that world, as well as garnering
knowledge about world political economy, about global demographics, and
about the differences between developed and developing nations. Like
Introduction to Liberal Arts, Global Perspectives shares common readings
and emphasizes communication skills introduced in the first year.
Reflections
The turn outward represented by Global Perspectives is balanced in
Reflections by a turn inward to consideration of personal values. As in
Global Perspectives we ask students in Reflections courses to analyze
familiar and unfamiliar systems of thought and belief, but this time in
order to explore their own and others’ ideas about the ultimate meaning
and purposes of our lives. Because inquiry about human values can occur in
a variety of disciplinary contexts, our students may choose in their third
year from a menu of courses representing philosophical, religious,
artistic, and scientific perspectives. Yet each course in its own way
addresses foundational questions, linking provisional answers
to descriptions of ethical conduct and an examined life.
Citizenship
By the time students are seniors, they have been asked in Integrated
Studies courses to develop some understanding of their places in college,
their places in the world, and their own beliefs and values. The senior
capstone course, Citizenship, challenges students to move past study and
contemplation to conscientious action. Citizenship courses, chosen from a
menu of offerings, typically take an interdisciplinary approach to
understanding important social issues. Then students are called upon to
address those issues variously as citizens of community, nation, and
world. Individual and group projects may involve position papers, social
or political policy proposals, development of and participation in service
projects, or other experiential learning projects.
III. Area Studies (Distribution Requirements)
This component of General Education serves two essential goals of liberal
education, supplying breadth of basic knowledge in important fields of
study, and providing a basis for judging the purposes and methods of our
four divisions of knowledge: Foreign Languages, the Arts, the Sciences,
and Human Societies.
Foreign Languages
Important to understanding one’s own culture is being able to step outside
of it, even for the duration of a course. Learning another language
requires students to understand and communicate in new patterns of
thought, on terms other than their own. Studying a foreign language is
experiential learning, requiring students to explore the linguistic and
cultural richness of a world beyond their own. To satisfy the Foreign
Language requirement, students must be proficient at the 102 level of
language study, in other words at the level commensurate with one year of
college-level study. International students whose native language is other
than English meet the Foreign Language requirements by demonstrating their
competency in English, which is for them a foreign language.
The Arts
Literature, music,
art, and theater are among the greatest accomplishments of the human
imagination and spirit. Human beings have found in the arts ways to shape
and give order to experience, to express their most private feelings, to
celebrate life, and to affirm human community. The arts transmit to us the
wealth of the past and give promise of transmitting the best of the
present to the future. We believe that to value the arts fully, students
must both appreciate historic and formal achievements and participate in
the creative processes; thus, students will take one 3-hour semester
course in “Appreciation” and two credits in “Participation,” ideally
before the end of the junior year.
The Sciences
Like the Arts, Science represents imaginative achievement: a systematic
method and an organized body of knowledge about our physical universe and
its life forms. Study in the sciences further defines the extent to which
discovery and invention have shaped human identity, human choices, human
societies, and changed our relationship to Nature. The Area Studies
requirement in the Sciences is for two courses, one under the category of
“Physical Sciences” and the other under “Life Sciences.” Each course has a
laboratory experience, replicating the art requirement’s emphasis on the
importance of participation in the learning process.
Human Societies
The final component of Area Studies recognizes that because we are social
beings, human institutions shape our lives. To a considerable extent, society
and culture influence our ideas, describe and delimit our choices, and deepen
and constrain our understandings of individuality and community. Human Societies
courses consider the nature and extent of institutional influences on our lives.
In conjunction with the first three Integrated Studies courses, the menu of
Human Societies courses provides understanding of personal and societal issues
taken up later in the capstone Citizenship course.
IV. The Major
The Major Program provides students with more comprehensive study of a
particular discipline, both its methods and its information. Depth, rigor, and
coherence are the keynotes of major study. Understanding the process and methods whereby disciplinary
knowledge is discovered, developed, and refined over time enables students to
appreciate that current generations of theorists and practitioners stand
on the shoulders of those who have gone before. The major may or may not
be directly linked to the career a student intends to follow, but it
should reflect a student’s desire to explore a discipline comprehensively,
because such exploration and knowledge are themselves profoundly
important. A further goal of the major is to prepare students for careers
and graduate study.
Departmental Major
Students may take a major program in a single
discipline, fulfilling the requirements set by the department. The
departmental major provides an appropriate culminating experience during
the senior year: a special seminar, a thesis, or an independent study
project. Each department publishes a description of the purposes and scope
of the major program in its discipline(s), identifying the courses that
are required including courses intensive in speaking, writing, and
quantitative skills development. No more than forty semester hours may be
required in a discipline; students may take additional courses in the
discipline as electives, but they may count no more than 50 hours in a
single discipline toward the 124 required for a degree. In addition,
students may count no more than 62 hours in a single department.
Topical Major
The topical major provides a unique opportunity for the
student who wants to pursue in depth an interest area that bridges the
subject area of several departments. The student’s advisor plays an
important role in helping to plan a topical major. The topical major
consists of at least 36 semester hours, 18 of them at the 300 or 400
level. One of these courses must be designated as the culminating
experience. The Admissions and Academic Status Committee must approve the
proposed set of courses and formally appoint the advisor who will guide
the student. Requests for approval of a topical major must be filed at
least three semesters before the student’s graduation.
V. Elective Courses
Beyond the General Education and Major requirements, students have
opportunities to take courses that may enhance and augment major study or
simply satisfy curiosity in another area of interest. Elective courses
provide opportunities for enrichment and experimentation. Topics and
instructors that students would not otherwise encounter may spark a
life-long hobby, hone a passionate interest, dedicate a life to
volunteerism, or even result in a change in career plans.
Our four-year General Education program— comprised of Foundation
Skills, Integrated Studies, and Area Studies—informs and references
Major and Elective course choices. Taken altogether they represent a
distinctive, intentional, and integrated liberal arts curriculum, an
education that challenges students to life-long learning, personal
achievement and leadership, citizenship, and service.
In Summary
In summary form, these are the requirements for the degree:
1. Four years of academic work in which the student earns at least 124
semester hours of credit. An average of C (2.00) or higher must be
obtained in course work taken at Monmouth College. The senior residency
requirement stipulates that after attaining senior status (90 semester
hours), at least 27 semester hours of the remaining credits required for
the degree must be granted by the College.
2. Completion of all general education requirements with a passing grade.
(Transfer students who enter Monmouth College with 24 or more semester
hours of credit will be exempt from taking INTG 101.)
3. Completion of a major program with at least a C- grade in all courses
required for the major and an overall C average (2.0) in those courses.
(Certain majors have stricter requirements. Read through the departmental
descriptions carefully.) Although minors are not required, in order to
complete a minor, the grade point average of courses in the minor program
must be at least a 2.0 with no grades below C-.
4. Payment of all current financial obligations to the College.
Application for Degree
Candidates for the Bachelor of Arts degree must make formal application to
the Registrar one year (2 full semesters) in advance of their expected
graduation.
Assessment of the Academic Program
Monmouth College is actively engaged in assessing student learning. The
ultimate goal of assessment is to improve the education students receive at Monmouth
College by evaluating the educational program. Specifically, assessment attempts to identify what
the college wants students to learn, to determine how well students are
learning what they need, and to help students learn more effectively.
Assessment activities are overseen by the Assessment Committee. Some of
these activities are carried out in the classroom, such as standardized
testing and transcript reflection. Other assessment activities are carried
out after graduation through alumni surveys. Yet other activities are
embedded in the day-to-day activities of class work. Occasionally,
students may be requested to participate in assessment activities outside
of their normal class work. The data collected from these activities
culminate in a five-year assessment report for each department and program
at Monmouth College.
General Education Program
Courses that satisfy the requirements of the general education program are
designated by the faculty. In addition to the courses listed in the
College Catalog, some courses
that vary in content satisfy requirements when particular topics are
offered. Such courses are listed in semester course schedules.
See the PDF version of the Monmouth College
Catalog (also accessible via the drop-down menu on the opening page of the College
website) for the latest information about courses that meet specific
requirements as well as the official College statement about degree
requirements and academic policies.
See the
Course Schedule page on the Registrar's Office website for the
current year's schedule of courses, with associated information.