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Nov 21, 2024
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2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog
Great Works Academic Certificate
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The Great Works Academic Certificate (GWAC) program provides students with an opportunity to take part in a conversation with some of the best thinkers of all time. The study of great works in philosophy, politics, literature, sciences, religion, and the fine arts encourages critical thinking that aims at truth. Such study confronts what it means to be human and thus immeasurably enhances a person’s daily life.
The program provides a choice between two tracks to earn the certificate:
- Track 1 provides a way for students to satisfy most of the requirements in the General Education Core by taking courses featuring core texts and ideas. These courses concentrate on fundamental ideas such as justice, love, freedom, and equality through the reading of primary texts by great authors. This track also provides the opportunity for students to proceed through the requirements in a cohort, taking the same courses together.
- Track 2 offers more flexibility while requiring the same number of credits in the same kind of courses as track 1.
Students who complete the requirements for track 1 or 2 will receive a notation on their transcript as well as the certificate.
Students should notify the director of their interest in the program as soon as possible in their college career. Students who think they have already fulfilled some of the requirements are urged to contact the director.
The Great Works Faculty Committee www.unlv.edu/liberalarts/great-works/committee also manages the Minor in Great Works. The Minor in Great Works rewards students for taking more courses in which great books or works in the fine arts are prominent. Some students may want to combine this minor with a major oriented toward a particular line of work. Please visit Great Works Minor requirements in this catalog for information on the minor.
Please see the UNLV College of Liberal Arts Great Works Program web page at www.unlv.edu/liberalarts/great-works for information about the program, faculty and facilities. Degree worksheets are available at www.unlv.edu/certificate/great-works.
Learning Outcomes
- To improve students’ ability to read and analyze carefully.
The challenge of great works summons careful attention and thoughtful critique because such works are impossible to categorize easily. Students will leave the program as better critical thinkers in all aspects of their lives.
- To promote students’ facility with the written word.
Most classes within the program have a writing component that involves the development of good skills in research and analysis. In addition, exposure to excellent writing and thought helps promote better writing. Careful reading is a prerequisite of good writing.
- To engage students in a conversation on fundamental questions of human life.
Works on the list for the program treat questions of what it means to be human, such as: What is the structure of the universe? What is human nature? What is love? What is justice, and what does it require of us? Even if students do not find answers to those questions and learn only how to ask the questions more cogently, they will have accomplished a great deal.
- To increase students’ appreciation of freedom.
When students begin college, they notice how much less time they spend in class than they did in high school. Students need to ask whether that free time makes them more free. In studying great works, they have the opportunity to reflect on what freedom means and on how they may best use their freedom.
- To enrich students’ university experience and encourage lifelong learning.
A lecture series and a reading group encourage integration of students’ academic and social activities. Reading primary texts allows students to experience more continuity across subjects. This experience encourages a lifelong curiosity — an eagerness and an ability to continue learning independently after college.
- To provide students with a superior background for graduate school.
Graduate programs want students who are familiar with key primary texts in areas such as philosophy, literature, and the sciences. Those texts are the foundation of all disciplines in the liberal arts.
- To prepare students better for today’s careers.
Specific skills learned in college often become less useful within several years of graduation, and people may change jobs or professions several times in the course of their lives. The program will help students develop an intellectual strength that will allow them to maintain a variety of jobs more successfully.
Admission to the Program
There is no formal admissions process for the certificate. To participate in the program, a student must be formally admitted to UNLV. The program is open to undergraduates from any college. An undergraduate certificate must be declared prior to graduating from a UNLV major.
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University Graduation Requirements
To obtain this certificate, you must be a degree seeking undergraduate student pursuing an approved UNLV bachelor’s degree. Please see Graduation Policies for complete information.
Great Works Certificate Track 1 - Total Credits: 12
Students who complete this track will earn the certificate and will be closer to completing their General Education Core Distribution requirements.
Beyond the certificate, to complete the General Education Core, students will need to satisfy only the Mathematics and Nevada Constitution requirements. Those two requirements can be satisfied in as few as 4 credits.
Beyond the certificate, students will still need to complete the General Education Distribution requirements (except the 3 of 6 credits in the Humanities that GWK 300 Great Works of Philosophy and Literature satisfies; see below).
Toward earning the certificate, students may count credits that also count toward their major or minor.
Required Courses
Satisfactory completion requires a minimum grade point average of 3.0 in the 4 courses and a minimum grade of B- in each of the 4 courses.
Great Works Certificate Track 2 - Total Credits: 12
Required Courses - Credits: 6
This track offers more flexibility in the courses taken.
Satisfactory completion requires a minimum grade point average of 3.0 in the 12 credits and a minimum grade of B- in each course that counts toward the 12 credits.
Electives - Credits: 6
- A list of approved electives is available on the website www.unlv.edu/liberalarts/great-works/requirements. Courses other than those electives, including independent studies, may be accepted with the approval of the director. The standard rule is that one-half or more of the readings on the syllabus should consist of works (studied in whole or in part) by authors on a revisable list approved by the Great Works Faculty Committee. The list of authors is also available on the website.
- Students may take 3 credits of electives in the history of art or music in 1 of the following courses: ART 260 , ART 261 , ART 266 , MUS 341 , MUS 342 , MUS 343 .
- Students may use 9 credits in a single foreign language as a substitute for 3 credits of electives.
Notes
- HON 110 will be accepted as a substitute for ENG 231 .
- At least 6 credits must be completed at UNLV, including GWK 300 .
- Students may count courses taken to fulfill graduation requirements (university, college, and departmental) toward fulfillment of the requirements if the course is on the list of electives or otherwise meets the requirement for content.
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