Seal element of the university of freiburg in the shape of a flower

Curriculum

The Liberal Arts and Sciences BA/BSc Program is a 4 year, 240 ECTS credit study program with a progressive storyline, covering academic skills, specialization, and room for exploration.

In the Electives, students undertake courses, including studies abroad, and projects to deepen and/or broaden their studies and to enhance their profile.

The Majors provide an in-depth education in an interdisciplinary academic field. At the end of the Foundational Year and after having taken three Introductions, students choose one of the following:

  1. Culture and History
  2. Governance
  3. Life Sciences
  4. Environmental and Sustainability Sciences

The Core includes basic and advanced academic skills, reflections on knowledge and science, and a curriculum on responsibility and leadership. Core courses are taken by all LAS students.

The LAS Curriculum in Detail

The Core provides a shared foundation for knowledge and reflection in academic and non-academic contexts. It combines skills, research methods, and general epistemology, includes philosophical and practical elements, and consists of the following modules:

The Module Handbook has a full description of each module. The Course Catalog lists the courses on offer per module.

1. Academic Key Skills

Especially in the Foundational Year, students develop and sharpen their academic key skills: research and analytical methods, researching and working with academic literature and sources, and academic presentation.

2. Reflections on Science and Knowledge

The Program’s emphasis on reflections on scientific knowledge and methods is mirrored in the two UCF professorships: Epistemology and Theory of Science (ETS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS).

These four Core modules form the LAS inter- and meta-disciplinary backbone and provide a coherent framework for the Majors. Key ETS topics include logic, the human epistemic condition, epistemic and social status of scientific theories, the progress of science, and the reality of scientific objects. STS courses focus on science, technology, and academia from a historical and a modern perspective and explore their interdependence on society, as well as on everyday knowledge practices.

3. Responsibility and Leadership

These courses inspire and equip students to engage with future challenges and goals. They prompt students to think about their roles and responsibilities in the world, as well as their personal vision in life. The two sequential modules focus on four themes: social (in)equality, personalities and group processes, applied ethics, and leadership. Courses combine academic work with personal reflection and training in more experiential formats.

For more information about the LAS Core, please contact Thorsten Leiendecker.

Collage of students preparing for Model United Nations and having class discussions.

Governance studies what happens when many people live together and depend on each other. It is about the negotiation and achievement of common goals, such as peace, prosperity, and happiness. The Major Governance is different from a program in political science or in law because it covers a broader range of social science disciplines. It is oriented around three central areas of inquiry: communities, states, and markets. In answering questions about communities, states, and markets, the Major draws on social sciences and legal studies: political science (political theory, comparative politics, and international relations), classical and behavioral economics, political sociology and public administration, and legal studies, especially human rights and international law.

The following chart is an overview of the modules in the Governance Major:

The Module Handbook has a full description of each module. The Course Catalog lists the courses on offer per module. And for an overview of what Governance graduates do after graduation from UCF, please see our After LAS page.

For more information about Governance Major, please contact Dr. Mila Mikalay.

More about the LAS Program