Liberal Arts (MLA)

Overview

The Master of Liberal Arts Program is an interdisciplinary graduate program for adults interested in crossing the boundaries of a traditional, career-oriented approach. It is of particular interest to those who want to explore new disciplines in the liberal arts, who wish to supplement their professional education by continued intellectual growth, or who simply wish to satisfy their continuing intellectual curiosity and creativity.

The Master of Liberal Arts program has become popular with recent college graduates who want to continue their education, as well as educators who desire an alternative to traditional education graduate programs. A number of elementary, middle, and high school educators have used the program to accumulate continuing professional education credits required in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

McDaniel College is a member of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs.

Admissions Requirements

Candidates required to submit:

Application for graduate study with non-refundable fee
Official transcript conferring bachelor’s degree (minimum 3.0* GPA) from an accredited institution
Three reference forms

*Applicants not meeting this criterion may be admitted to the program after a review of the MLA coordinator.

Courses

The MLA program consists of ten, three-credit courses, and a Final Project (over two semesters worth six-credits) for a total of 36 credit hours. Although there are required courses, the program’s primary feature is that students are expected to design a Program of Study. This flexibility allows students to pursue courses that best reflect their personal and professional interests. The MLA program has the following requirements.

Required Courses (21 credits)

Any two courses of the Program of Study may come from outside the MLA curriculum (transferred from another McDaniel graduate program or from another accredited graduate institution). A maximum of one independent study course is permitted within the Program of Study (though a second independent study may be arranged with coordinator permission).

Specializations

Students may specialize their course of study in the MLA program. Completion of a specialization will be noted on the final transcript. The fields of specialization are: Environmental Literacy (EL), Fine Arts (FA), Language and Literature (LL), and Social Studies (SS).

For students who wish to complete one of the specialization tracks in the MLA program, four of the elective courses (12 credits) within the Program of Study must come from that specialization and the final project must be completed in that area of specialization.

MLA Curriculum

The following is a list of potential MLA elective courses. Other courses may fulfill elective requirements by permission of the program coordinator.