Southwestern
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2000-2001 Catalog
Southwestern
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SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY: A STATEMENT
A university is more than a collection of courses or programs. At its best a university provides a coherent and interrelated vision of learning. At Southwestern, we believe that individual programs should be seen against the background of this fundamental concept of a university. In a liberal arts university, the major is accomplished within the context of a student’s becoming a broadly educated person.
In other words, at Southwestern University, there is one overarching educational goal that all students pursue, the goal of a liberal education.
A liberal arts education ranges across many disciplines. It exposes the student poet to physics and technology and the young accountant to the history of art. It takes advantage of each subject’s potential for posing value questions and for displaying problems, facts, ideas, events, and situations in their full contexts — cultural, scientific, aesthetic, political, historical, and technological. At its best, it produces generalists who can think critically and creatively, exercise judgment, sort through complexities, tolerate ambiguity, communicate effectively, and adapt to change.
At Southwestern, we believe a liberal education is the most important educational goal because it offers personal enrichment, broadening one’s comprehension and deepening one’s capacities for a fuller, more rewarding life. Concurrently, a liberal education is an excellent foundation for most careers. A liberal education teaches communication skills, sharpens decision-making capacities, and develops analytical abilities. Most importantly, a liberal education is based on a course of study that conveys the skills and habits for continued learning. It provides an understanding of global events and the context from which to speculate about tomorrow.
In addition to exploring new areas of inquiry through elective options, every student’s academic program at Southwestern has two distinct elements — the General Education program and the major or area of concentration.
Southwestern’s General Education Requirements offer students a common experience by bringing them face to face with the principles and methods of the chief branches of human thought and creativity. At Southwestern, all entering first-year students begin the General Education program with Foundation. These courses satisfy English composition and mathematics proficiency requirements, as well as provide a common intellectual experience for first-year students through the First-year Seminar.
These Foundation courses require students to develop competence in writing, critical analysis, and problem solving at the very beginning of their college career. In addition, all students must take courses to satisfy a requirement of computer literacy. Students must be able to demonstrate knowledge of the operation of computers and understand how they can be used in problem solving, particularly in relation to their chosen major field. Building upon these communication and quantitative skills, all students continue the General Education Requirements by choosing representative Perspectives on Knowledge courses from the humanities, social sciences, fine arts, and natural sciences. The Perspectives on Knowledge courses are so-named because through those requirements, students acquire a broad perspective, enabling them to graduate with considered values, perceptive awareness, and purpose, knowing and understanding more about the complexity and richness of the world around them.
The General Education program and the major or area of concentration program are complementary, with the General Education program serving as a foundation upon which students can build a successful academic program in a field of specialization. Southwestern undergraduates can choose from approximately 30 majors many of which offer a choice of several emphases or concentrations and include a variety of special, double, and interdisciplinary majors. Maintaining the balance between required general learning and the major is one of the hallmarks of the quality education available at Southwestern.
While the Perspectives on Knowledge requirements ensure a breadth of exposure to the liberal arts, the major allows for the deeper exploration of a specific discipline. As a part of the major, students are required to complete an integrative or “capstone” experience. The precise nature of this obligation depends on each student’s major as well as particular interests. Most fulfill the requirement with an extended research paper, a final project, or a special senior seminar. The purpose of this requirement is to allow students to demonstrate their overall grasp of their chosen major and show their ability to interrelate that knowledge.
This combination — general requirements and a major — taken within a personalized setting where close association with the faculty is the norm, is designed to develop basic intellectual skills of analysis and communication, to examine the moral and aesthetic dimensions of human culture, and to foster breadth and depth in theoretical knowledge. It is our belief that all of these build a foundation for success and fulfillment in personal, professional, and civic life after graduation.
AIMS OF THE UNIVERSITY
Officially adopted by the faculty and Board of Trustees in 1972:
Southwestern University, under the auspices of the United Methodist Church, is committed to undergraduate liberal education involving both the study of and participation in significant aspects of our cultural heritage, expressed primarily through the arts, the sciences, the institutions, and the professions of society. Emphasis is placed upon the relationships among these areas of endeavor and upon utilizing the various scholarly methods employed in the enrichment of society. As a teaching-learning community, Southwestern believes that a Christian appraisal of existence encourages rigorous inquiry and scholarship, creative teaching, and the expression of free human life. The University seeks to involve the student in finding a personal and social direction for life, developing more sensitive methods of communication, cultivating those qualities and skills which make for personal and professional effectiveness, and learning to think clearly and make relevant judgments and discriminations.
POLICY STATEMENTS
Southwestern University is committed to the principle of equal opportunity for all persons without regard to sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, national or ethnic origin, or any other impermissable factor. It is also committed to taking affirmative steps to see that such opportunities are made available for personnel in employment, promotion, transfer, recruitment, rates of pay and other forms of compensation, and selection for training.
Southwestern University is also committed to equal opportunity for all persons to complete a Southwestern Degree program. Therefore, no academically qualified applicant will be refused admission on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, national or ethnic origin, or any other impermissable factor. Recruitment and the administration of student financial aid will be conducted on the same non-discriminatory basis.
Southwestern University, in compliance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1992, recognizes that qualified students who have made Southwestern University aware of diagnosed disabilities, including specific learning disabilities, are entitled to an equal opportunity to benefit from the educational program of the University and that reasonable academic accommodations may be necessary to provide that opportunity to students with disabilities.