During the senior year, all students enrolled in Mercer's College of Liberal Arts are required to take a Senior Capstone course. This exit seminar focuses on topics that emphasize questions of value and meaning. Raising a variety of issues similar to those raised in the First-Year Seminar, the course provides students with the opportunity to integrate the knowledge and express the ideas acquired throughout the college experience.
The most exciting breakthroughs in human knowledge occur when people use their imaginations to ask new questions about old familiar facts and ideas. Similarly, the most exciting experiences in one's personal life occur when they have the courage to question what is generally taken for granted, leading to new insights and growth. The Senior Capstone encourages students to formulate questions central to their lives and their generation. These questions begin the process of continuing to live confidently and competently in this often bewildering world.
Program Overview
Because ideas must be tested by being shared with others until they are clearly expressed and reasonably supported, the Capstone courses emphasize written communication and intelligent discussion. Everyone has the right to his or her own ideas, but it takes discipline and skill to form an opinion that it is truly one's own. Students acquire these skills by reading challenging an interesting books and writing papers that explore not only the messages and meanings of these texts, but also their own responses to these ideas. Thus, students gain confidence in their abilities to ask important questions, discover significant answers, support their conclusions, and articulate their viewpoints regarding the issues at stake.
Senior Capstone courses do all this and more. They prepare for the next step into adulthood and for what awaits them in the "real world." Successful completion of a Senior Capstone course is a requirement for graduation. Seniors from different majors share and compare their perspectives and expertise. Spiritual, ethical, and intellectual values are explored.
Curriculum
Successful completion of a Senior Capstone course is a graduation requirement for College of Liberal Arts students. Several courses from the curriculum are offered each semester as well as in the summer. These courses use materials from a variety of disciplines and require seminar discussions and extensive writing. Enrollment in each section is limited to encourage student participation. It is the student's responsibility to arrange his or her schedule to accommodate one of these courses in the senior year. Senior Capstone courses are limited to students who have earned at least 90 hours credit. Only one Senior Capstone may be counted as part of the 128 hours required for graduation.
Courses Offered
SCP 450 Search for Expression: The Arts and Society
The ultimate goal of this course is to cultivate a civic awareness and appreciation of the significance of the performing and plastic arts.
SCP 451 Self and World: Issues of Choice and Responsibility
An examination of some of the important challenges to personal integrity and fulfillment that face us in the contemporary world.
SCP 453 The Human Prospect in a World of Scarcity
An examination of contemporary problems and long range prospects for the U.S. and the world with respect to energy consumption, food supply, population growth, resource depletion, and environmental degradation and pollution.
SCP 454 American Destinies Since the Great Depression
An examination of the essential character of the American experience as it has evolved through the lives of the three generations who have come to maturity since the Great Depression.
SCP 455 Genocide and the Holocaust
An examination of the development of modern genocide as an instrument of national and ideological politics, including the roles of technology, bureaucracy, the professions, religion, and ethics.
SCP 456 Male and Female in American Culture
An examination of the social origins and the ideological bases for the distinction of male and female roles historically and in contemporary society.
SCP 457 The Quest for Wholeness
An examination of the meaning of suffering in human life and the nature of fulfillment.
SCP 458 Death and Dying
An examination of the significance of death encountered as the why that hovers over human existence and endeavor.
SCP 459 Black and White in American Culture
An examination of race and racism in American society.
SCP 460 In Search of a Calling: Issues of Vocation and Work
An examination of the relationship between who we are (vocation) and what we do (work).