General Education Curriculum: Liberal Arts Core Education (LACE)
The purpose of LACE is to offer a liberal education intentionally grounded in the ideals of the CSJ Core Values and the Mission of Mount Saint Mary’s University. The goal of the curriculum is to emphasize leadership and a spirit to serve while enabling students with the knowledge and skills needed to better themselves, their environments, and the world. In the pursuit of this goal, innovative teaching and learning surround the principles central to a Mount education: the Spirit of our Founders, Community, Global Awareness and Understanding, and Women and Gender.
Student success is measured through the following LACE learning outcomes:
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Written Communication: Students will be able to effectively express ideas in written form.
- Quantitative Reasoning: Students will be able to solve problems and draw conclusions.
- Critical Thinking: Students will be able to recognize assumptions, their underlying values, as well as assess and develop arguments.
- Language: Students will be able to show basic competence in the following four areas of the target language: oral expression, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and written expression.
- Spirit of the Founders: Students will engage in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition as expressed in the CSJ mission of serving God and Neighbor as one by analyzing and applying this knowledge to advance core values of social justice, human rights and engagement.
- Community: Students will critically analyze and apply disciplinary perspectives and contexts to the studies of communities, in order to build a sense of responsibility and skills necessary to serve.
- Global Awareness and Understanding: Students will evaluate or apply modes of academic inquiry to historical and/or current global contexts.
- Women and Gender: Students will critically evaluate the role of women and gender in society.
- Integrative Scholarship: Students will demonstrate interdisciplinary knowledge and ability to connect diverse academic perspectives by critically examining topics related to the human condition under any of the central themes of LACE: Spirit of the Founders, Community, Global Awareness and Understanding, and Women and Gender.