University of Redlands > Academics > College of Arts & Sciences > Undergraduate Studies > Religious Studies > Program Learning Outcomes

Program Learning Outcomes

Religious Studies

Bachelor of Arts

I. Learning Goal: Students will develop a sophisticated appreciation for the complexity of religious cultures and communities.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Students examine and apply a variety of methodological approaches for exploring religious traditions. 
2. Students recognize diverse forms of religious thought and practices within and between religious traditions.
3. Students identify the reciprocal dynamic of religious beliefs and practices with politics, economics, and other social arenas.

II. Learning Goal: Students will encounter religious texts by employing interpretive reading methods giving light to new insights for illumining their lives.

Learning Outcomes: 

1. Students critically analyze and interpret texts invested with religious authority. 
2. Students distinguish and locate transformative textual processes in different historical-cultural contexts.

III. Learning Goal: Students will be transformed by their learning.

Learning Outcomes: 

1. Students analyze complex ethical questions through a variety of ethical perspectives including those grounded in religious traditions. 
2. Students discover an evolving self-knowledge, which includes an awareness of their own ethical values and a familiarity with their own sources for personal renewal, encounters with beauty, and compassion towards self and others.

IV. Learning Goal: Students will develop skills enabling them to be independent thinkers.

Learning Outcomes: 

1. Students create an independent research project through formulating an original, substantive and meaningful thesis, and provide evidence of prolonged engagement with appropriate sources in order to support their argument. 
2. Students articulate their academic voice by placing their own project in conversation with broader scholarship. Students will demonstrate their mastery of their project by communicating their findings in a public forum.

Learning outcome for all graduates of the College of Arts & Sciences