Liberal Studies

Course Overview

The Liberal Studies Program encourages the ongoing pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake, as well as trains students for exciting scholarly futures. The Liberal Studies student body is as varied and interesting as its curriculum. Our students range in age from their mid-twenties to their late sixties, and they represent all walks of life. They share the common desire to keep learning at a sophisticated level, to pursue their personal intellectual passions, and to develop their fullest human potential. With their expansive life experiences and heterogeneous intellectual backgrounds, our students not only benefit from, but also contribute significantly to the success of the Liberal Studies Program. Along with faculty devoted to the liberal ideals represented by Wake Forest University, our students form a vital, exciting, and immensely rewarding learning community. The Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program offers both traditional and adult students opportunities unlike those they experienced when pursuing their undergraduate degree. The program makes a deliberate effort to synthesize rather than merely analyze, to shift students' attention away from specialized fields of endeavor toward broader, more comprehensive areas of human intellectual interest. The two trajectories offered within our program are the MA degree (30 hours, GRE required, including a thesis project, and typically pursued as full-time status) , and the MALS degree (33 hours, no GRE and no thesis project, and most students in this track pursue the degree part-time).