Rewritten & revamped
Degree completion plans changed and updated
Liberty University’s Office of the Provost and College of General Studies have worked with deans and faculty to create a comparable Degree Completion Plan (DCP) between residential and online degree programs that will take effect
in fall 2017.
Provost and Chief Academic Officer Ron Hawkins said the university recently completed its 10-year reaffirmation with its regional accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
“Every 10 years we have to go through a complete scrub of everything academically,” Hawkins said.
“We submit a massive report that takes over two years to put together an off-site team for evaluation, and then we have an on-site visit by a team of six to eight people who come on site to complete the evaluation at greater depth.”
Hawkins said one concern the on-site team required the administration to address was the incompatibility they found between the number of hours in Christian Life and Thought required for residential students compared to the number required for online students.
A residential student was required to take 21 credit hours from the Christian Life and Thought section while online students were only required to take 12 credit hours.
In the view of the on-site team, this meant the residential degree programs were less demanding than the online programs, Hawkins said.
The uneven requirement left fewer hours for the major in residential programs.
“We did not want to delete courses from our Christian Life and Thought requirement, so we kept all of our courses and adjusted the number of hours assigned to each required course to make them comparable for both online and residential,” Hawkins said.
The Office of the Provost and the College of General Studies worked through these concerns with the Liberty Divinity School leadership to ensure that the Biblical Worldview classes, Theology I and II, Evangelism and Old and New Testament classes remained on the DCP.
Beginning in fall 2017, residential students will have the opportunity to take the same number of hours in their major, minor and electives that online students were allowed to take, which will satisfy the concerns expressed by SACS.
Liberty University senior Haley Thomas said she learned a lot about Liberty’s beliefs as a result of the Christian Life and Thought classes she was required to take during her four years.
“I liked that it gave a foundation of the spiritual aspect of the school, so I feel like it was a good introduction based on what the school
believed,” Thomas said.
Along with the DCP changes, a larger list for the general education classes has been made available.
Additionally, all incoming freshmen and sophomores will be required to take Inquiry 101 and Research 201.
These courses will be delivered online.
Hawkins said these requirements are part of a Quality Enhancement Program (QEP) that helps identify areas where the university can improve.
“We chose our QEP to help undergraduate students in our residential program appreciate and understand the value of research and to provide opportunities for our third and fourth year students to actually do research projects with faculty mentors,” Hawkins said.
The DCP changes will give more freedom to students when choosing electives while also keeping the unique Christian Life and Thought aspect of the DCP.
“We wanted to maintain the Christian Life and Thought piece, but we also wanted to give greater opportunity for students to choose in these other areas,” Hawkins said.
“I think it just makes Liberty a more attractive place to be.
When you provide students with options for learning, that opens up more opportunity for them (to do so).”
Conley is a news reporter.