The Miami Plan for Liberal Education
Liberal education complements specialized studies in your major and provides a broadened context for exploring personal and career choices. Every student, regardless of major, is required to participate in the Miami Plan for Liberal Education. Liberal education course work and co-curricular programming emphasize four basic goals:
• Thinking Critically. Students achieve perspective by combining imagination, intuition, reasoning, and evaluation. Critical thinking develops the ability to construct and discern relationships, analyze arguments, and solve complex problems.
• Understanding Contexts. Because how we know may be as important as what we know, examining assumptions is an important part of learning. Knowledge of the conceptual frameworks and achievements of the arts, sciences, technology, and the character of global society is crucial to our future.
• Engaging with Other Learners. A healthy exchange of different ideas and viewpoints encourages rethinking of accepted perspectives. Therefore, diversity among learners, a supportive atmosphere of group work, active listening, and opportunities to critique results encourage learning through shared efforts.
• Reflecting and Acting. By making thoughtful decisions and examining their consequences, students may enhance personal moral commitment, enrich ethical understanding, and strengthen civic participation.
Requirements of the Miami Plan
All students must complete courses identified as parts of the Miami Plan as well as courses in the major. The Miami Plan has two parts: Foundation and Focus. The Foundation requirement is met by taking 36 semester hours of Foundation courses in five specific areas. The Focus requirement is met by a minimum of nine hours in a Thematic Sequence outside your department of major and a minimum of three hours in a Senior Capstone Experience taken in your final year of study. The Field includes courses required by your major and division; it also includes electives. If you choose to declare a minor and complete all the requirements for that minor, it will be posted to your academic record.
The Miami Plan is an expanding liberal education curriculum. Additions to its range of courses or modifications of its requirements may be learned by contacting the Office of Liberal Education or any divisional advising office.
Extended Study and Service-Learning in Miami Plan Courses
Students may gain an extra credit hour in any Foundation course, Thematic Sequence course, or Capstone for academic work and/or service-learning activities directly connected to the content and objectives of these courses. Students are responsible for initiating the extra-hour proposals. Instructors will determine whether the proposed work represents an extra credit hour and if their teaching schedules and related professional activities will permit them to sponsor and monitor these projects. The maximum number of hours of extended study or service-learning that can be applied to graduation is four; students may propose and enroll in such courses no more than once each semester.
An instructor should write a memo of understanding—preferably with the student—outlining expectations that must be fulfilled either by the end of the current semester or the semester immediately succeeding for the extra hour to be awarded. The academic department approves this memo before the project begins. Two grades are assigned: one for the primary course and one for the extended study and/or service-learning project. Credit/no-credit may be used for extended study and/or service-learning projects in Foundation courses and Thematic Sequence courses; credit/no-credit cannot be used in required Capstones in the student's department of major.
Extended study and/or service-learning permits, which must be completed by students and endorsed by sponsoring instructors and department chairs, are available from the Office of Liberal Education. For more information, consult the Office of Liberal Education or the Office of Student Leadership and Service Learning.
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