The Liberal Studies Program (LSP) is the common curriculum taken by all students enrolled in the traditional undergraduate colleges at DePaulUniversity. The LSP is designed to enhance writing abilities, mathematical and technological proficiencies, and critical and creative thinking skills, while broadening students’ knowledge base beyond their chosen major. LSP courses foster  an appreciation of different religious and philosophical worldviews, promote application of ethical reasoning, and realize new understanding of concepts and theories through multiple methods of inquiry and disciplinary perspective. In LSP seminars, students read primary texts, write research papers, and communicate their ideas orally. Essential intellectual skills are further reinforced throughout the program with performance assignments, field observations, laboratory research, and more. While the LSP curriculum itself is quite varied, the Program as a whole shares these four learning goals: 1) Reflectiveness; 2) Value Consciousness; 3) Multicultural Perspective; and 4) Creative and Critical Thinking. 

Reflectiveness encourages students to not just learn scholarly concepts and theories, but also be able to articulate how they have come to know what they do. Value-consciousness stimulates a sense of personal responsibility with new understanding, and a desire to create a more just and humane world.  A multicultural perspective demands that students grapple with the plurality of worldviews, and enhance their awareness of the experiences, contributions, and concerns of diverse communities, in both contemporary and historical times. Across the curriculum, creative and critical thinking skills are emphasized to develop in students the capacity for self-critical and autonomous thinking. Ultimately, LSP courses lay the groundwork to discover, transform, and create knowledge, and are meant to instill a thirst for lifelong learning.