Associate inLiberal Studies

Courses in Liberal Studies

Three or more credit hours of credit must be earned in each of the following areas by the completion of courses listed.

*Does not satisfy IAI General Education Core Curriculum.

Liberal Studies Degree Requirements

1. The student must complete a minimum of 62 credit hours with a “C” (2.0) or above average for all college work attempted. (Courses numbered below 100 may not be applied toward the ALS degree.)
2. A written statement of the student’s educational goals and a written course of study to accomplish them must be completed and approved by an ALS advisor prior to the student’s registration for the last 32 credit hours of college credit work, not to include any credit from proficiency examinations or national testing programs. If a student fails to complete the “written course of study” before the final 33 credit hours, the following requirement applies as to when the agreement is initiated; between 33-45 credit hours, the student must complete a one credit capstone course; between 46-54 credit hours, the student must complete a two credit capstone course; and with 55 credits or more, the student must complete a three credit capstone course. The capstone course maybe LIB 250, LIB 260, INDP 299, or a departmental independent study. The capstone course will be undertaken with a faculty member and must be approved as part of the ALS degree agreement.
3. The student must complete a core curriculum of 21 credit hours with a minimum of three hours of credit in each of the following areas: written communication skills, spoken communication skills, humanities, social sciences, science, mathematics, and Non-Western studies. A detailed description of this core curriculum follows.
4. The student must complete ten credit hours of college credit work at Black Hawk College, but this does not have to be the last ten hours of work. No credit earned through national testing programs or college proficiency examinations may be included within this ten-hour requirement.
5. No more than twenty-five percent of credit applied toward the ALS degree may be earned in Independent Study 299.

The purpose of the ALS core curriculum is to ensure that the student’s course of study possesses sufficient breadth to qualify as a college degree. The requirements for the core curriculum can be satisfied by credit earned at Black Hawk College or by credit accepted in transfer from other accredited colleges and universities. These requirements may also be satisfied by credit earned on the basis of the appropriate general or subject examinations in the College Level Examination
Program (CLEP).