COR 401:  Senior Capstone
Advanced Integrative Studies

Course Description: COR 401 is a senior capstone for a Greenville College liberal arts education.  The course is designed to help students understand the integrative nature of that education.  It brings together students and faculty in a collaborative experience that integrates multiple disciplines, values with learning, and theory with practice.  This is accomplished by focusing on a real world issue within the framework of a biblical worldview.  COR 401 builds on students’ exposure to both introductory general education courses distributed across the disciplines and on their advanced courses within specific disciplines.  But it goes beyond both to lead students into advanced integrative studies.  The course therefore attempts to help students understand how both breadth and depth of education are means to real integration and wholistic truth.  Students work in small groups to produce a collaborative studies thesis/project, in order to accomplish the course objectives.  (Prerequisites:  senior status and completion of other required COR courses.)

Course Objectives
Students completing COR 401 should  be able to :

Institutional Objectives:

1.      recognize that a Christian liberal arts education leads to wholistic problem solving which takes into account faith and values, as well as the breadth and depth of knowledge gained through general education and major field studies.

1, 3 and 9

2.      recognize that real world issues are always more complex than we individually think and that they are best approached by a community of varied investigators working together.

2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and, 7

3.      recognize that a biblical worldview seeks to be comprehensive and thus transcend the limits of specific intellectual or cultural perspectives.

1, 2 and 9

4.      articulate both the specific knowledge limitations of their own disciplines as they solve problems and the advantages of interdisciplinary collaboration

2, 3, and 7

5.      successfully work with wide variety of people as they face the challenge of talking and listening across disciplines while drawing upon the best skills of their own disciplines.

3, 5, and 6

6.      synthesize information and knowledge from scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, in order to generate possible solutions for significant real world issues.

1, 2 and 9
    1. Seek truth.  Seek it dynamically, integratively, comprehensively, biblically, and historically, with discipline and scholarship; and seek meaning in truth through recognition that it proceeds from God.
    2. Learn to think critically and creatively.  Develop such thinking processes as induction; deduction; problem solving; quantitative reasoning; intuition; communication; interpretation; aesthetic discernment; creative expression; and perceptive reading, viewing, and listening.
    3. Understand and value the wholeness of creation.  Integrate knowledge from many areas of study into a comprehensive point of view. Learn to discern truth, goodness, and beauty; take interest in ideas regardless of their immediate utility; and exercise stewardship over one's physical and biological environment.
    4. Understand our world.  Know the basic content and processes of the physical and biological world, the human race, our civilization, our society, our technological environment, and other cultures.
    5. Respect human life and understand the human condition.  Recognize humankind's best and worst capacities; affirm persons of all ethnic and racial backgrounds as creative bearers of God's image; respond to and love others, and work for reconciliation.
    6. Understand and apply basic social structures and processes.  Recognize society's diverse manifestations, develop cultural sensitivity, and communicate effectively and responsibly.
    7. Develop self-understanding.  Exercise integrity of character, personal expression, and stewardship of self; appreciate the value of one's own physical and psychological well-being; and recognize learning as a life-long process.
    8. Value personal accomplishment.  Recognize talent as from God and accept responsibility for developing creative skills, demonstrate competence in at least one area of study, learn to make sound judgements, and develop a sense of vocation, which gives meaningful direction to one's life.
    9. Respond to God's expression.  Understand the Judeo-Christian worldview as made manifest through Scripture, Tradition, and Experience; fully embrace one's role in the Body of Christ; respond to God's initiating grace; be sensitive to the Spirit of God at work in the individual, the church, and the world; affirm the values of truth, goodness, beauty, and the glory of God; express those values in responsible decisions and action; and join in God's creative and redemptive activity by becoming a servant leader.