Special Jesuit Liberal Arts Honors Program (SJLA)

Daniel Haggerty, Ph.D., Director

Available by invitation to incoming first-year students, the Special Jesuit Liberal Arts Honors Program provides an alternate way of fulfilling General Education requirements. Students not selected initially may apply for admission as second semester first-year students or as sophomores. Courses for SJLA program participants, who are drawn from many different majors, attempt to foster skills that University graduates have found particularly useful in law, medicine, business and graduate school.

SJLA Program Outcomes:

1. Students will display a comprehension of the history of and major texts in Western philosophy, theology, and literature.
2. Students will demonstrate eloquentia perfecta in speech and writing, stemming from a mastery of the elements of critical thinking, reading, and listening.
3. Students will show evidence of personal formation - a thoughtful sense of their relationship to themselves, to others, and to God- and of the role of cultivated community in personal growth, discernment, and life-long learning.
4. Students will demonstrate, based upon study and on personal experience, the ideal of being men and women for and with others.

Students are expected to become involved in extracurricular and service activities on campus if they wish to remain in SJLA. Many participants also study abroad, earn a double major in philosophy, and join the Honors Program if they apply and are accepted during their sophomore year. Above all, participants are expected to seek out and interact with their professors and other students in this community of learning, which is under the direction of Daniel Haggerty, Ph.D.

Electives

SJLA students should use their seven or eight elective courses to study history, mathematics, the natural and social sciences, and languages.