The Master of Liberal Arts and Science program, Vanderbilt University’s prime educational outreach program to the Nashville community, is attracting record numbers of students and expanding course offerings.
This summer a MLAS class in religious architecture has been visiting sanctuaries across Middle Tennessee. Upcoming courses include Music, Gender and Sexuality, James Bond and Popular Culture and Southern Literature. Three certificate curriculums have been initiated, in ethics, creative arts and history.
“Last spring we had about 80 students among six courses,” said Martin Rapisarda, associate dean in the College of Arts and Science. “That’s a record number of courses offered in any one semester, and a record number of students in any one semester for the program.”
The growth indicates expanding interest in Nashville in the benefits of lifelong learning.
The MLAS program puts top Vanderbilt faculty in the classroom with adults who wish to continue their education at the graduate level but are constrained by the demands of career and family. Typically, students in the program take one course per semester which meets one evening a week.
The program costs $2,151 for each three-hour course, or half the regular Vanderbilt rate for graduate courses. Vanderbilt employees get a discount that cuts tuition to $645 per class.
The courses are rigorous, with term papers and research expected of the students.
“If this were merely a coffee klatch, it would certainly not be a Vanderbilt University graduate degree program, and I wouldn’t be able to interest our faculty in taking part,” Rapisarda said. “I tell students to expect to work hard and to spend at least 10-12 hours a week preparing for class.”
Rapisarda has added two required core seminars to the now 30-hour program, one to help ease students back into the rigors of the classroom and designed to be taken as the first class in the program. The Capstone Seminar, the last class in the program, encourages students to apply skills learned in the other classes to an extended study of a particular interest culminating in a thesis, work of art or other final project.
“We’ve seen incredible growth,” Rapisarda said. “Right now, we’ve got faculty lined up until Spring 2009 to teach in the program. This audience of motivated adult learners has proved to be a popular experience for our faculty.”
rad. go vandy.
