Tentative Course List for
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Title of Program of Study (What are you taking all these courses to discover/demonstrate/etc.?
You can see examples of Program of Study titles on the Program website:
http://www.kent.edu/CAS/LiberalStudies/examples.cfm):
Areas of Study (the departments from which your electives, which you will list below, come.
There must be at least three but not more than four unless you intend to take more than the
minimum number of hours required.):
Required Courses:
AS 61000 Introduction to Liberal Studies (2 hours): Offered only online, only in the fall. You
must complete this course successfully within your first 12 months after being admitted in order
to remain in the program. Because it is offered online, there is no risk of schedule conflicts.
AS 61001 Liberal Studies Research Paper (1 hour): Offered in tandem with AS 61000, this
course offers an opportunity for students who do not have a firm grasp on how to write an
organized graduate-level research essay. Students who either have that skill down or who are
working in fields that do not require research papers may be exempted from this requirement
with the Director’s permission.
AS 61098 Liberal Studies Essay (3 hours): You will enroll in this course when you are ready to
start working on your Essay with your Adviser and Reader near the end of your program. This is
a registration by permission only course. In order to enroll, you must first fill out the Essay Topic
Approval Form, which you will find on the Useful Forms for Current Students page of the
program website, get the necessary signatures from your Adviser and Reader, and turn the form
in to the Program Director, so that he can have the necessary authorization put in to allow you to
register for this class. See the instructions on the Essay Topic Approval Form for details.
Electives:
Step 1. List here your tentative electives. There must be at least 28 hours of courses here, but if
you want to take more than that, you are free to do so. Please list your proposed electives
following the format used for the Required Courses above, with 1) the field designation (AS, for
example), 2) the number (61000), 3) the title (Introduction to Liberal Studies), and 4) the number
of credit hours (2 hours) for each course:
Step 2. Now, once you’ve completed your list of tentative courses, copy/paste the relevant ones
into the four categories below. Some courses will figure in more than one category.
a. All the 60000-level courses on your list other than AS 61000 and AS 61098 (minimum 11
hours):
b. The courses on your list that are in your major discipline (minimum of 12 hours):
c. The courses on your list that are in your second and third (and, if you wish, fourth)
disciplines, i.e. all the courses on your list that are not in your major discipline (minimum
12 hours):
d. All the courses on your list that are in the College of Arts and Sciences in addition to AS
61000 and AS 61098. [Arts and Sciences courses include Anthropology, Biological Sciences,
Chemistry and Biochemistry, Computer Science, English, Geography, Geology, History, Math,
Foreign Languages, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. They are
not just courses listed in the Schedule of Classes under Arts and Sciences with the AS prefix.]
(minimum 12 hours):
Step 3. When you have finished filling this form out, copy/paste it into your Goal Statement.
Note 1: Some students in the Master of Liberal Studies program take courses full-time
and finish in two years. Some go part-time and take up to six years. One time-table is as valid as
the other. Please remember, however, that there is a six year limit for completing a masters
degree at KSU.
Note 2: Some students, once they have been admitted to the Master of Liberal Studies
program and are taking courses, decide to change their program. This is fine, though it must
always be done in consultation with the Director. In order to graduate, students must complete
the required courses specified above plus a minimum of 28 hours of graduate-level electives that
form a cohesive whole (or 27 hours if you elect to take AS 61001 at the same time as AS
61000). Once into the program, a student may well find that a different course in one of her
fields would be more appropriate than the one she had originally proposed. That’s fine, and the
substitution can be made, always in consultation with the Director, without increasing the
number of hours of electives required. If, however, the student decides to change the focus of his
program such that some of the courses he took initially no longer form a unified whole with
those taken subsequently, he will not be able to use those early courses toward his final program.
In other words, the requirement is 28/27 hours of electives that constitute a unified whole, not
just 28/27 hours of electives. Again, while the student most certainly has the freedom to alter her
program once she has started it, she should always and only do so in consultation with the
Director.