2021-2022 Residential Undergraduate Catalog 
    
    Mar 19, 2024  
2021-2022 Residential Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Academic Divisions and the Liberal Arts


 

New England College offers a robust array of undergraduate residential programs. Faculty work together to promote integration of coursework and to build foundations for continued study and professional success. All disciplines and programs of New England College prepare undergraduate students for graduate study or for immediate entry into professional or pre‐professional positions and prepare graduate students for professions or advancement within professions. New England College’s departments, majors, minors, and other academic programs are housed in the following divisions: Art and Design, Humanities, Management, and the Science, Health and Education Division.  New England College’s Liberal Arts and Sciences Core crosses all divisions to create a cohesive general education experience for all students.

Art and Design Division

The mission of the Division of Art and Design is to advance knowledge, to encourage intellectual inquiry, and to cultivate creativity through research, scholarship, artistry, and public performance through programs centered around discipline-specific studies and inter-disciplinary collaboration toward preparing students for careers in the visual and performing arts. Programs within the Division engage in creative research and discovery, promote ethical and moral decision-making and leadership, and contribute to the cultural enrichment of our communities.

Program outcomes within the division educate students to:

  • Articulate the formal and conceptual qualities of the various fine, media and performing arts.
  • Create a cohesive body of work and articulate concepts and methods of production
  • Write creatively and critically about the arts
  • Interpret art and theatre based historical texts and art criticism.
  • Articulate the interrelationship between the arts.
  • Describe the relationship of the visual and performing arts to history and culture.
  • Evaluate their own and others art works.
  • Apply the principles and concepts of the field(s) to new situations.
  • Implement relevant research methods and principles.

Majors

  • Art (Fine Arts and Media Arts Concentrations)
  • Bachelor of Fine Arts Programs
  • Game and Digital Media Design
  • Theatre
  • Art History (minor)

Humanities Division

The mission of the Humanities Division is to promote the understanding of what it is to be human and explore the ways humans interact with each other and the environment. To those ends we seek to develop in our students.

  • Critical and creative thought, communication skills, imagination and curiosity;
  • Ethical and humane values that reflect respect for all the members of our species and for the natural environment in which we live;
  • An understanding of the rule of law, morality and ethics and how they inform a commitment to social justice;
  • An appreciation for beauty and elegance in all human endeavors including the search for meaning and truth;
  • Knowledge of the variety of human cultures, the civic environment in which in which we engage one another and the memory of the cumulative thoughts and acts of all humankind;

Majors

  • Communication Studies
  • Creative Writing
  • Criminal Justice (Associate of Arts and Bachelor of Arts)
  • History
  • Integrated Studies (in Philosophy and Literature)
  • Political Science
  • Environmental Communication (minor)
  • Homeland Security (minor)
  • Women and Gender Studies (minor)
  • Humanities (Associate of Arts)

Management Division

The programs in the Division of Management provide opportunities to develop ethical and responsible citizens who appreciate the economic and political landscape of a changing global environment. The curriculum brings several traditional fields of study, including business, economics, and marketing together in new and exciting ways to help students prepare for further studies or careers in business, communication, government, and not‐for-profit organizations. Whether graduates find their niche in starting a business or working in an established community or corporate setting, they will have developed the critical thinking and analytical skills necessary for managing resources, information, and ideas.

Majors

  • Accounting
  • Business Administration (Accounting, Marketing, and Strategic Sales Management concentrations)
  • Computer Information Systems
  • Sports and Recreation Management
  • Business Administration (Associate of Arts)

Science, Health and Education Division

The programs in the Science, Health and Education Division are important disciplines for understanding the world. As such, they are firmly embedded in the liberal arts and natural and social science traditions.   In our mission, we seek to:

  • Enable students to understand the forces that shape individual, societal dynamics and change in the natural world;
  • Empower students to be lifelong learners and agents of change;
  • Promote a concern in students for enhancing the quality of individual lives in all environments;
  • Provide a supportive context in which students are encouraged to develop their own ethical world views;
  • Develop students’ critical thinking skills to be able to analyze reliable knowledge and make rational and logical decisions;
  • Use scientific methods as universal problem‐solving techniques and to integrate these techniques into everyday life.
  • Foster creativity and qualities of effective leadership;
  • Foster sensitivity to and the appreciation of cultural, ethnic, gender, and generational differences;
  • Prepare students for graduate study or immediate entry into professional or pre-professional careers.

Majors

  • Biology (General and Conservation Biology concentrations)
  • Education (Teacher Preparation)
  • Educational Communities
  • Environmental Science
  • Environmental Studies and Sustainability
  • Health Science (with various pre-professional tracts)
  • Kinesiology
  • Outdoor Education
  • Psychology (General and Human Services concentrations)
  • Chemistry (minor)
  • Social Work (minor) to be discontinued 8/2021
  • Natural Science; Social Science (Associate of Arts)

 

The Liberal Arts and Sciences Core Curriculum

Education for the Common Good

The New England College General Education Program reflects the values and commitments of a liberal arts education as reflected in a humanizing curriculum that supports engaged and responsible learning and teaching.

By placing the Common Good at the center of our Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) Core Curriculum, New England College recognizes the importance of understanding and strengthening the interdependencies that form the basis of community and promote life, and human flourishing. As the nucleus of our general education program, the LAS Core Curriculum provides a course of study that demonstrates how each of the disciplines of knowledge contributes to this understanding. Through the application of ideas to real world challenges, LAS seminars encourage responsible, ethical action in service to preserving and maintaining our natural and civic environments as the foundations of our collective well‐being.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completing the Liberal Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum students will be able to:

  • Describe the interdependence between human culture and the natural world;
  • Explain how concepts of sustainability are connected to issues of social justice, the environment, and the economy;
  • Explain the relationship between freedom of inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge and democratic/free societies;
  • Discuss the inter‐relationships among the disciplines;
  • Apply critical and creative thinking, quantitative reasoning, and information literacy skills in the pursuit of knowledge;
  • Apply course content (theory) to the world beyond the classroom (practice);
  • Articulate an understanding of the ethical dimensions of knowledge and action.

Learning Outcomes by LAS Seminar

LAS Writing Outcomes

In this course, students will learn to:

  • Read, discern, and evaluate texts critically
  • Reflect upon, analyze, and respond to a variety of texts pertaining to the civic and the natural world
  • Identify a target audience
  • Apply the compositional process (observe, reflect, investigate, brainstorm, outline, write, revise, edit, and proofread) to a variety of writing forms
  • Understand the importance of and the process for proper documentation
  • Plan, draft, revise, and edit their texts according to the conventions of composition;
  • Utilize different rhetorical strategies in writing: narrative, descriptive, expository, argumentative, and persuasive;
  • Compile a comprehensive portfolio that demonstrates competency in compositional skill and process.

LAS Quantitative Literacy Outcomes

• Number sense and estimation;
• Statistical interpretation and basic probability;
• Interpretation of graphs and models;
• Logic, critical thinking, and problem solving.

LAS Seminar 1 Outcomes

Students will demonstrate ability to:

  • Articulate a foundation for exploring the question of human nature and a shared humanity from multiple perspectives;
  • Discuss our interdependence with other humans and life supporting eco-systems;
  • Formulate questions that lead to discovery;
  • Critically identify and test assumptions;
  • Interpret and reflect on texts, information;
  • Discuss the interdisciplinary nature of human understanding.
  • Articulate a personal vision of the responsibilities and obligations of a shared humanity in the context of the natural world.

LAS 2 Seminar Outcomes

Students will demonstrate ability to:

  • Articulate the central values that form the basis of democratic thought and democratic free societies; 
  • Explain the importance of the concept of human rights in the development of cultures;
  • Analyze the challenges of democracy in relation to the diversity of human culture and thought;
  • Identify the shared struggles of people, historically and cross-culturally, in their efforts to exercise political sovereignty and secure basic human rights.

LAS 3 Seminar Outcomes

Students will demonstrate ability to:

  • Develop and practice skills needed to produce a specific artistic form;
  • Craft a portfolio of artworks/series of performances/texts or their equivalents;
  • Apply the vocabulary of analysis in peer evaluation in the creative arts as well as the vocabulary of the discipline to self and peer evaluation;
  • Demonstrate conceptual competency in the discipline.

LAS 4 Seminar Outcomes

Students will demonstrate ability to:                         

  • Demonstrate an understanding of how developments in social and intellectual history shape and affect human values and institutions;
  • Articulate foundational theories specific to the social science under consideration;
  • Explain the significance of policies and regulations in the social sciences;
  •  Identify ethical considerations and dilemmas that arise in the social sciences;
  • Demonstrate an understanding of basic social science research methods; acquire and use appropriate professional social science terminology.

LAS 5 Seminar Outcomes

Students will demonstrate ability to:                         

  • Apply scientific methods to develop and test hypotheses in the laboratory or the field;
  • Apply qualitative/quantitative reasoning to the scientific process.

LAS 6 Seminar Outcomes

Students will:   

  • Demonstrate an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts of the humanities;
  • Produce work that exhibits a multi-disciplinary approach to knowledge;
  • Articulate how the humanities informs our understanding of what it means to be human.

LAS 7 Seminar Outcomes

Students will:  

  • Apply multi-disciplinary approaches to analyze course topics;
  • Articulate the relationship and interdependencies between the local and global community relevant to course content.