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the liberal studies (liba) program
preparing a proposal
instructions for students
This document is a supplement to the Liberal Studies program guide, which is the primary source of information about the program and its requirements. If you are interested in entering the program we urge you to consult as early as possible with the General Studies office. We want to make sure that you understand the program, and that you don’t go too far in a direction that will not be productive.
The General Idea
If you look through the Stockton Bulletin you will see program guides for various majors. Each of these explains the rationale, purposes, or goals of the particular area of study and then describes in some detail the requirements for a degree in that area. Presumably, the requirements are designed to fulfill the goals. A LIBA proposal is something like a program guide in this way: you explain the rationale, purposes, or goals of your education, in other words what you would like to learn about, and then you construct a set of requirements for yourself in order to fulfill your objectives.
Since your program is unique and doesn’t have a standard identity
like “history” or “chemistry,” it requires more explanation than they do –
both the rationale and the program of study need a fuller explanation
than in a typical program guide.
Your proposal is likely to go through several drafts. This is normal and not cause for alarm. You will submit your drafts to the General Studies office and to faculty members you are working with, and get feedback. When we think the proposal is ready, we will schedule a meeting of your committee, at which (we hope!) your program will be approved.
At that point the proposal becomes a contract between you and
the College, so the details of your program of study are important.
Format for the Proposal
The General Studies office prefers not to prescribe any more rigid a format for LIBA proposals than is necessary, since we want to leave room for individuality. But there are some common elements that we expect to find.
First, some details: The proposal should bear you name (of course), Z number, a phone number and address where we can reach you, the title of your LIBA program, and the names of two faculty members who will serve as your sponsors. We will advise you on choosing faculty sponsors if you wish, though it will be your responsibility to secure their agreement to participate. The faculty sponsors may not be from the same academic discipline.
Sample LIBA proposals are available for you to examine in the General Studies office. The purpose of looking at them is to get a sense of the usual formats that proposals take, not to study their content. We expect all LIBAs to be different, so it is really only the format that they are likely to have in common.
Rationale
The body of the proposal may be thought of as explaining a set of ends and means, or “why” and “how.” The rationale is the section where you explain the “why.” Normally it is a good idea to begin with a brief, clear, but fairly general statement of what your proposed program is about, what you see as the focus of your education. Every LIBA must have a focus, whether on a theme or topic or subject area that interests you, or on a goal that you wish to pursue through your planned program. It ought to be possible to summarize your focus in a sentence, although it will of course need a longer explanation as well. That is what comes next.
Elaborate on your statement of focus. What does it mean to you? (Possibly not the same thing that a similar phrase means to another student.) Why do you want to study this area? (Again, it won’t necessarily be for the same reason another student would have.) Some LIBA proposals include a certain amount of personal history here, intended to explain how the student came to have an interest in a particular course of study. This is not mandatory.
Based on your focus area, and on the broader goal of obtaining a rich liberal arts education, you should indicate those areas of academic skills and knowledge that will make particularly important contributions to your curriculum. For example, “I need to have greater awareness of the differences between America and other cultures in this respect.” “I need to develop my ability to identify, form, and argue about value judgments.” “I need to increase my knowledge of the historical context of this field.” “I need to know the biological reasons why this problem occurs.” Each of these “needs” for skills or knowledge will be met taking courses from one or more academic subject areas. Indicate which areas these are. This is a key point in your proposal: it is where you make the link between your “why” and your “how.”
Although you may not need to discuss this directly in detail, the readers of your proposal should come away from it with an understanding of why your needs are better served by a LIBA program than they could be through any of the College’s existing majors. This could be for various reasons, and it will be more obvious for some students than for others.
Description
The description is the “how” section. You will lay out here a complete listing of the courses to be included in your education – all those taken so far (including any transfer credits), those for which you are now enrolled, and those you propose to take in the future right up to graduation.
How do you know what future courses to list? Go through the entire college Bulletin with an open mind. Get expert advice – that’s part of what your faculty sponsors are for. What if you pick courses but then they aren’t offered? This can happen. If it does, you’ll choose substitutes, with your committee’s permission.
Listing your courses isn’t enough. You have to organize the list, not chronologically but in categories. What categories? Those that make sense for you. Two LIBA students could take the very same courses but organize them into different categories. Don’t simply base your categories on acronyms, but think in terms of functions. What role does each course serve in your program? Group together the courses that serve the same or very similar functions, regardless of their acronyms. This category making can be the most interesting part of planning your LIBA. Give the categories headings that make their roles clear. Some students have written narrative explanations of their categories. This isn’t a requirement, but it may be helpful, depending on how self-evident your categories are. Sometimes the categories are explained in the Rationale section, so further explanation in the Description isn’t necessary.
Within each category list all the courses past, present, and future. Show in some way which courses have not yet been taken, since the readers need to know which of your choices can still be changed, and should be able to get a sense of how far along you are in each category.
Include in the list all your courses, including those not closely related to your focus area. We will want to see the full breadth of your proposed education, including your plans for meeting the goals of the College’s General Studies program and college writing, quantitative and subscript requirements. Students often designate a category of courses as “general” or as “at some distance”
How many credits belong to the “focus” and how many should be at some distance? This is another question that doesn’t have just one right answer. It depends partly on how much breadth of study is built into your focus. That is, if you are already integrating courses from many disciplines into your program, there is less need to strengthen your at some distance area than there is if your focus draws on only a few subjects. Like all B.A. degrees, the LIBA program (focus) must be a minimum of 64 credits.
Another factor is the extent to which your curriculum is based on liberal arts courses. The LIBA degree is a Bachelor of Arts rather than a Bachelor of Science degree, and at Stockton that means that it should be substantially a liberal arts degree. If your focus includes a heavy technical or professional emphasis, you may need to add liberal arts course to complement this. It is usually possible to find liberal arts courses that are relevant to the main area of study.
Evaluation
Here you answer the question, “At graduation time how will we know that you have completed a sound educational program?” As for any student, part of the answer to this is that you will have earned grades for all your courses. In addition, every LIBA student is required to complete a senior project, and this project should be one that enables you to demonstrate the richness of your LIBA program. It should draw its subject matter and method from all the main areas of study in your program, and show your ability to integrate these various areas into a coherent whole. In a sense, it is a place to show off.
There is no single required format for the senior project. It might be a traditional (but interdisciplinary) research project. But it could also be as different from that as a series of works of art, or of taped radio broadcasts. The appropriate format depends on the nature of your LIBA.
Many LIBA students do some type of internship. An internship experience is not normally, by itself, sufficient as a senior project. You need to supplement it with an appropriate academic paper or project. We can discuss with you some ways of arranging this.
Resources
Does the college have the resources needed to support your program? If not, it would not be fair to you or responsible on our part to approve the program. The kinds of resources we are talking about include:
· Faculty with appropriate expertise
· Courses related to your focus – enough of them to make a solid program
· Library holdings (if not at Stockton, then available somewhere else that is accessible to you)
· Other facilities, such as laboratories or special equipment that you need
· Off campus people, organizations, or facilities if appropriate
We would like to mention some particular resources that all Stockton students should at least consider, but which may be of particular interest to LIBA students. You might think about:
· Internships or other practical experience, taken for credit – a good idea not only for career-oriented LIBAs but for others as well
· The Washington Internship program – various seminars and intern experiences are available, and can be fitted in with many different focus areas
· Study overseas – an excellent way to broaden both your education and your life experience, and a fine complement to almost any LIBA.
A Final Note
If you are just beginning to write the first draft of your proposal, we suggest you don’t try to do too much at once. Concentrate on the Rationale first, and especially on explaining what your focus is. The Description theoretically is designed after the Rationale, but in practice you can go back and forth between the two. Don’t try to perfect your proposal before showing it to us or to your sponsors for feedback. And don’t worry too much about the senior project at this stage – unless an idea comes to you easily. That can wait until a later draft. Above all if you have questions, don’t be afraid to ask them.