BORICUA COLLEGE | BACHELOR OF ARTS DEGREE

Liberal Arts and Sciences Program

(HEGIS: 4901)
Minimum Required Credits: 124

Goal: Demonstrate the scholarly ability to examine through study and research the human condition of the 21st Century through an interdisciplinary approach to the liberal arts and sciences.

 Objectives:

  1. Demonstrate self-awareness and mastery of the generic intellectual and affective skills necessary for life-long learning.

  2. Demonstrate the ability to integrate the intellectual, affective and psychomotor competencies with the knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences for scholarly research and professional practice.

  3. Demonstrate competency in the research methodology required to examine the human condition, through an interdisciplinary approach.

  4. Demonstrate competency in the application of both “instrumental” and “interpretive” knowledge in understanding the multicultural human experience.

NOTE: This degree requires completion of minimum of 124 credits, 60 credits in the Generic Studies-Liberal Arts and Sciences program and 60 credits in a program of study designed for a specific student and approved by the Vice President for Academic Affairs composed of courses from the Five Ways of Learning Model of the College.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding by examining relationships between literature, life, the affect and values in appreciating literary works. Authors discussed: Milton, Blake, Whitman, Yeats, Joyce, O’Neil and McLeish.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding through the dynamics of group discussion thereby understand how becoming aware of the affective dimension in critical exchange, and writers use history to create fictions. Authors discussed: Shakespeare, Milton Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Joyce and Eliot.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of social values inherent in selected works of: Emerson, Poe, O’Henry, Edna St. Vincent Millay, O’Neil, Hughes, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Alice Walker.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate their aptitude through group discussions, students learn about the relation between language and social phenomena. Significant issues include: multilingualism, linguistic standard vs. non-standard dialects, language attitudes, language choice, linguistic maintenance and shift.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding through the dynamics of group discussion; students will study recurring themes in Latin American Literature: The Conquest, civilization and conflicts, the dictator, the superimposition of cultural layers. Authors included: Horacio Quiroga, Garcia Marquez, Ana Lydia Vega, Carlos Fuentes and others.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding through the dynamics of group discussions. Students will study contemporary short stories by writers from several Latin American countries, from the perspective of predominant issues such as: social/political, urban/rural, male/female, mythical/cultural.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of contemporary Latin American women writers, starting with the founders: Gabriela Mistral, Delmira Augustini, Julia de Burgos, and going on to the works of modern writers, Luisa Venezuela, Isabel Allende, Nicholasa Mohr. Focus is on literary style, characteristics, and feminist issues.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of major poets of Latin America by tracing their lives and works. Focus is on the connection between significant life issues and literature.

  • By participating in small group interaction, coordinated by a Faculty Facilitator, students will demonstrate a sophisticated level of the affective skills of listening, responding and valuing as they read, discuss and write about American Literature. Students will demonstrate their ability to detect how group members organize themselves according to the groups purpose of learning the principal aspects of literacy study’s; how they set the agenda, tasks and rules; how they terminate group processes as they socially construct knowledge of the grammar of literacy criticism, textual analysis, esthetic theories and the social and political milieu of the authors under study: Steinbeck, Ellison, Faulkner, Piri Thomas and Junot Diaz.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of Caribbean issues and their historical development.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding through group discussion, of Latin American history, including the role of the Church, State, military, as well as the social revolutions that shaped Latin America.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the issues and themes in American History and how they affect the individual; colonization, slavery, and the American revolution; the U.S. constitution, Civil War, imperialism, industrialization and capitalism, the depression, technology, civil rights and Black power movements, poverty and its causes and consequences, and immigration.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding, through group discussions, of the ethics and values of social science research in particular the study and uses of sociological research.

Colloquium

Small group colloquia are designed to provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate their self-awareness and Mastery of the Affective Skills of receiving (listening and reading), responding (speaking and writing) and expressing their values, feelings and emotions in understanding the generic principles of the liberal arts and sciences.

Experiential Studies

These courses concentrate on the “psychomotor” dimension of learning and  compliments the cognitive and affective skills developed in individualized instruction and colloquium.  These sequences of courses evolve from perceptual enrichment through sensory awareness and physical development to instrumental and complex skills where the cognitive and affective dimensions integrate with the psychomotor.

  • A series of workshops expose students to their perceptual skills through observation, recording and analysis of original documents and reports in their subject area of concentration. An additional 50 hours of field observation and recording is required.

  • Students develop skills and knowledge of their subject area of concentration by participating in supervised group research projects. A final project along with a presentation is required. An additional 50 hours of field observation and recording is required.

  • Students are placed in an on-the-job internship where they perform research in their subject area of concentration. 90 hours of faculty supervised internship is required per term.

  • Students are placed in an internship where they perform research in their subject area of concentration: 90 hours of faculty supervised internship is required per term.

Theoretical Studies (Electives)

  • Introduction to the historical principles psychology, and the philosophical and neurobiological basis of psychology; sensory processes, perception, cognition and consciousness; learning, conditioning, memory; basic motives, emotions and affect; personality, and social psychology.

  • Principles of development and individual differences and their measurement; biological, social and personality related determinants of behavior; abnormal psychology and general methods of therapy.

  • Introduces the concepts and methods used to study the nature and organization of human society: socialization, culture and social interaction.

  • Examines the basic institutions of society: the family, religion, education, the state and political order; social classes, stratification, bureaucracy, population and social change.

  • An introduction to the study of humankind through the perspective of general anthropology. Topics include: evolution; Homo Sapiens and their culture; language and culture; social stratification; sex, marriage and family; social organizations.

Cultural Studies (Electives)

The College believes that affirmation of students’ culture is essential to their learning process; Cultural Studies courses supplement as context for the learning processes of the previous four types of courses.

  • At the end of this course students will be able to demonstrate comprehension and knowledge of the economic, political, social, and cultural developments that created early civilizations. The course presents world history through an analysis of five (5) topics, including: 1) Human Origins and Human Cultures; 2) Settling Down: Rise of the Village Community and the City-State; 3) Empire and Imperialism; 4) Rise of World Religions; 5) Movement of Goods (Trade) and People (Migration).

  • At the end of this course students will be able to demonstrate comprehension and knowledge of the economic, political, social, and cultural developments that created contemporary civilizations. The course presents world history through an analysis of the following seven topics: 1) Nature of the Global Economy and Geopolitics in the 16th Century; 2) Economic Growth, Religion and Migration; 3) Industrial, Social and Political Revolutions in Europe and throughout the Americas; 4) Technological Innovations: Mass Production and Destruction; 5) the World at War (WWI and WWII) and the Rise of New Nations; 6) The Cold War and the Emergence of New Nations and the Third World; 7) Political, Religious, Economic and Cultural issues in the 21st Century.

    NOTE: Although World History I is not a prerequisite to taking World History II, it is advisable that students take World History I prior to taking World History II.

  • This is a survey course on the social, cultural, and political development of Western Civilization. Topics include: the ancient Near East; the civilization of the Greeks and Romans; European Civilization in the middle ages; the Age of Renaissance; the Age of Reformation; concept of the Nation-State and the search for order in the seventeenth century; the scientific revolution and the emergence of modern science.

  • An exploration of the history of art, beginning with prehistoric art and covering major periods and styles.

  • This course is a survey of English and American literature featuring both the classics and contemporary American writings in English, including by African American and Latino writers. The course will deal with English and American literary traditions such as the “gilded age”, African-American Renaissance, the American novel, Immigrant novel, magic reality, cultural identifications, celebrations and rituals, the role of the oral traditions and their transmission and transformation in written works, stylistic innovations in the use of language of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou and Julia de Burgos, writers as individuals and as a members of a cultural community.

Independent Studies

  • (TBA)

Individualized Instruction

The Individualized Instruction courses in the Generic Studies Core Curriculum program require students to demonstrate self-awareness and mastery in the use of critical, intellectual skills necessary for understanding the generic principles of the liberal arts and sciences. At Boricua College, the study of these mental processes is referred to as Cognitive Science.

  • Through an integration of the intellectual skills of comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation students will demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of the GENERIC forms of literature – fiction, poetry and drama and its generic principles, such as heroism, war, love, beauty – and how these genres may be discussed as life metaphors: English and American authors.

  • Through an integration of the intellectual skills of comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation, students will demonstrate understanding of the GENERIC forms of Latin American and Caribbean Literature – fiction, poetry, drama, magic reality – and how these forms may be discussed as life-metaphors. Fuentes, Garcia Marquez, Allende, Vargas Llosa, Burgos, Cortazar.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of Caribbean writers including: G. Roumain, E. Diaz Valcarcel, Alejo Carpentier, and R. Marrero Aristy. Focuses on the appreciation of literary style and portrayal of the linguistic, racial, socio-political and cultural complexities of the Caribbean.

  • Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the history of the Caribbean, emphasizing origins and aborigines, the Spanish conquest, colonization, independence movements, and the economic and social aspects of the Caribbean during the l8th and l9th centuries.

  • Through an integration of the intellectual skills of comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation students will demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of classical and contemporary sociological theories. They will translate from the works of 19th Century sociologists like Max Weber and August Compte, analyze the theories of 20th Century sociologists like Horkheimer and synthesize their own sociological theories after observing various generalizations. Authors discussed Bacon, Locke, Thereau, Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Ortega, Merton.