Master of Liberal Studies

at Kaplan Group - Arizona State University - Tempe Campus USA

Students in the BFA program in art with a concentration in photography are offered an education in the creation and analysis of photographs as a form of creative expression.

Students work in a wide range of photographic media including specialized 19th-century processes, traditional black-and-white and state-of-the-art digital output.

The internationally recognized photography faculty at ASU are diverse, representing and encouraging a wide range of approaches to the creation of photo-based art. Students learn to be self-disciplined and self-directed, to understand complex ideas around how images function in their work, and to develop a strong sense and control of the craft of photography. The Northlight Gallery engages students and provides opportunities to learn about gallery and museum practice through the mounting of exhibitions and working with artists and the collection.

Students in the MA program in art with a concentration in art education investigate issues in art teaching and learning from multiple perspectives, including art inquiry, curriculum theory, spatial design, studio practice, visual culture, social intervention, human development and cultural context.

The culminating experience may be conducted in a range of contexts where art learning takes place, such as in K-12 art classrooms, art centers and museums, public settings, university studios or in a teacher's own classroom.

The BA program in English with a concentration in writing, rhetorics and literacies teaches students strategies for inquiry.

Students explore the ways in which communication creates knowledge and action. Students study how communication is constructed, circulated, reacted to and repurposed through time and place. Through differing tools of inquiry, students investigate the history, theories and methods of inquiry as well as pragmatic and social actions of rhetoric, writing and literacies.

Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior. This diverse field includes mental health and counseling as well as child development, neuroscience and brain function, memory and decision-making, behavior analysis, statistics and more. It also crosses over into other disciplines such as medicine, law, business and economics.

This BA program in psychology --- emphasizing critical thinking and reasoning, quantitative research methods and writing --- goes beyond the classroom, adding practical experiences through internships, service-learning and faculty-supervised research. (Some opportunities are not available to students enrolled in the degree offered through ASU Online.)

Graduates are prepared for graduate programs in psychology or other areas as well as for professional employment.

The MA program in political science offers a variety of areas of specialization within and between the four main subfields of political science -- American politics, comparative politics, international relations, and political theory -- with particular strengths in ethno-religious dynamics, women and politics, conflict and human rights, and Latino politics.*

Faculty also conduct research and teach in the areas of political psychology and political economy, and many are active in collaborative interdisciplinary research at ASU and with scholars at other universities; many have won major grants and awards. The school is host to the Center on the Future of War, the Center for Latina/os and American Politics Research and an experimental lab.

This Master of Arts program may be taken as a terminal program or as a step toward eventual fulfillment of the requirements for the doctorate. Students who plan to obtain the doctorate at ASU should apply directly to the doctoral program.

*Students interested in a political theory specialization should consult with the academic unit prior to application prior to application.

This program is consistently ranked among the top 20 graduate programs in the United States, recognized for its high-impact, agile, interdisciplinary, results-oriented research on the most pressing societal needs.

The industrial engineering MS program prepares students to give practical and economically efficient solutions to real-life, complex problems --- solutions that require a system level approach. Examples of these problems include health delivery, food and energy systems as well as those that arise in the strategic planning of manufacturing, logistics operations and service industries. Some of the tools used to address these problems include statistics, optimization, computer simulation and advanced analytics.

The industrial engineering program is immersed in the innovation environment that permeates Arizona State University, and its faculty members are internationally recognized for their innovative research projects, funded both by government and industry.

The School of Arts, Media and Engineering educates the next generation of learners and empowers them with technofluency --- its development, application and implications. The School of Arts, Media and Engineering prepares students to be socially aware, critically thinking global citizens who strive to bring about positive change in a society that will be increasingly shaped by new technologies.

The BA program in digital culture equips students with the knowledge, abilities and technical skills they need for creating computational media.

Students learn to create computational media, which is computation combined with objects, sound, video, time, space, culture and bodies; breathe behavior into media, objects or systems by programming; think critically about how computation impacts lives and how culture makes a difference in how people experience computational media, a critical skill in this dynamic era.

Armed with skills and sound judgment, graduates work in cultural communication, marketing, design, social media, health, education, entertainment and creative arts, and all areas in which culture is shaped by technology and computational media. All students gain techniques to change the world and communicate using contemporary computational media, a vital power in the 21st century. Some go on to invent fresh techniques.

Digital Culture - Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance concentration

This digital culture program in interdisciplinary arts and performance is offered in partnership with the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. The program focuses on a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach to the arts, technology and performance. It emphasizes the traditions of transdisciplinary, avant-garde and experimental arts and on contemporary art and performance. Courses include digital media arts, music and electronic sound art, performance studies, theatre and performance practice and digital graphics.

The mission of the 60 credit hour program is to prepare students to become licensed professional counselors in Arizona and other states with comparable licensure requirements.

With its strong focus on multicultural counseling across the lifespan, students in the Master of Counseling program learn to promote the health of individuals, families, groups and organizations in a diverse society.

Faculty research and clinical foci include:

• advocacy
• children and adolescents
• counseling process and outcome
• couple and family relationships
• crisis assessment
• culturally responsive treatment
• mental health disparities
• nonbinary stress and resilience
• play therapy

The program instills in students the importance of research in advancing the counseling profession. The crucial link between science and practice is evident in the three complementary functions of the program's state-of-the-art Counselor Training Center: clinical service provision, high-quality training, and innovative process and outcome research.

The Master of Counseling program has endorsed the American Counseling Association's Code of Ethics and the following American Counseling Association competencies: ALGBTIC Competencies for Counseling LGBQIQA Individuals (2012), Competencies for Counseling the Multiracial Population (2015), Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (2015), Competencies for Addressing Spiritual and Religious Issues in Counseling (2009) and Multicultural Career Counseling Competencies (2009).

Materials science and engineering is concerned with the fundamental relationships between performance of materials and their structure and properties for a wide variety of engineering applications. Courses in the BSE program in materials science and engineering prepare students to design new and better materials to improve people's lives and keep America on the cutting edge of technology.

The astrophysics and astronomy MS program prepares you for discovering new planets, exploring cosmology, and building space-flight hardware and instruments for telescopes and satellites. You work with world-class faculty on NASA- and NSF-funded space missions, seeking answers to questions about how our universe began and how it continues to evolve.

This MS program provides fundamental graduate training in astrophysics and astronomy. Students take graduate-level courses in stars and interstellar media, galaxies, and cosmology; obtain quantitative skills through analysis and modelling, and may have observation opportunities through regional and international telescope observatories.