Liberal Arts Studies

At Ottawa University, we understand the liberal arts as an interdisciplinary discourse that blends focus and breadth, connecting the major/professional field with wider contexts and larger wholes, extending to the global community.  To this end, Ottawa University’s liberal arts studies program provides all students a shared core curriculum that develops critical thinking and long-term value for intellectual and ethical interrogation.  The liberal arts have a history that we seek to honor, albeit in a way responsive to contemporary reality. 

One feature that distinguishes Ottawa University from other universities that offer liberal arts and pre-professional education is Ottawa’s unique Liberal Arts Studies program (LAS).  Virtually all colleges and universities that grant a Bachelor’s degree require students to complete some kind of general education program.  These institutions often ask students to take courses in a variety of disciplines to ensure breadth, with the expectation that graduates will leave the University with more at their intellectual disposal than the knowledge of their major.  At Ottawa University, the curriculum provides opportunity for students to study elements of multiple disciplines, while at the same time reinforcing critical thinking skills through a sequence of interdisciplinary courses.

Critical thinking is the primary skill of the liberally educated person.  It is achieved, in an academic setting, via:

• Exposing oneself to a variety of disciplines and points of view,
• Posing questions - and answering them Developing a comfort with ambiguity Requiring evidence for assertions Delaying judgment Developing and wielding a variety of strategies to engage thinking (reading, writing, seeing, listening, speaking) Engaging in the study of “the best that is known and thought in the world . . . irrespective of practice, politics, and everything of the kind”. From the Function of Criticism in the Present Time by Matthew Arnold (1865).   

Ottawa University seeks to prepare its graduates with a breadth of knowledge and ability to integrate that knowledge, as well as to see how knowledge and questions from across different disciplines can enrich understanding of academic fields of study and professional careers.