Degree Requirements

As of Summer Term 2026, MALS 137: Thesis Research, will be a required course, all students must register and pay for. View information about this change here. 

As of Summer Term 2026, All students will be reuired to give a formal defense of their theis and register for MALS 411: Thesis Defense. This will be a graded course, which will appear on both the transcript and student bill. 

Any course in MALS can fulfill your elective requirement, the Summer Oxford Program no longer satistfies this requirement. However, it may be taken as an additional course. 

learning_outcomes.pdf

Students in the MALS Program should: 

- demonstrate a proficient grasp of the similarities and differences amongst disparate disciplinary perspectives on common problems, debates, or texts

- possess knowledge of the paradigmatic authors, works, discourses, theories, data, research methods, and arguments in their respective concentrations 

- know how to contextualize, communicate, and critically assess academic research, and creative writings 

- display the competency to move effectively from project conception to project execution through the use of a combination of analytic, immersive, and creative techniques 

- students who concentrate in Creative Writing should be able to produce well-crafted, publishable work in at least one of six genres taught in our curriculum: poetry, playwriting, fiction, screen writing, biography, and journalism. 

Evidence is focused on the capstone thesis, with benchmarks of progress along the way: 

- students in the MALS Program participate in a series of curricular and extra-curricular initiatives that are spread across their 18-months of coursework and designed to monitor and assess their progress in learning and applying the prerequisite skills.

-at the outset of their second quarter students take a research methodologies course with faculty who evaluate their proficiency at formulating a research question and generating the qualitative and/or quantitative inter-disciplinary protocols needed to accomplish a capstone MALS thesis. 

-in the third and fourth of the six terms of study, each MALS student works term-long on an Independent Study with a MALS faculty member who assesses the student's ability to formulate a significant research question and put their methodological skills to the work of generating an in-depth, sustained engagement with this question as well as the archive of influential published research responsive to this question. 

After the completion of MALS coursework, MALS students who are granted a MALS degree must satisfy the evaluative criteria of their three thesis examiners. 

All teaching faculty, the Director of the MALS Program and staff interpret and evaluate the available evidence of student achievement in relation to our learning outcomes. Faculty formally discuss and compare student achievements in the MALS curriculum commissioned to evaluate and improve student learning experiences. The MALS Thesis Committee, which is comprised of five MALS faculty members with at least three years' experience as MALS thesis examiners, must approve each student's MALS thesis proposal and endorse the slate of three faculty members the student has selected to advise and evaluate the MALS thesis. Further, nominations for the Byam-Shaw/Brownstone Family MALS Thesis Excellence Awards provide an opportunity for multiple MALS faculty to consider the individual student work and compare it from year to year. 

The values of inter-disciplinary research, critical, analytical, and creative thinking and writing reside at the core of the MALS Program's pedagogical mission. The MALS Program's commitment to this mission has engendered a culture of ongoing self-evaluation which inspires faculty to devise new courses responsive to the emergence of new areas of academic inquiry and to adapt the curriculum in required course to meet transformational alterations in established fields of knowledge. At our scheduled meetings, faculty regularly discuss and compare pedagogies they have found most effective in enhancing student engagement, propose strategies to ensure faculty coverage of required courses, and recommend the hiring of new faculty to develop courses answerable to student interest in innovative areas of academic inquiry. Following our most recent evaluation of our inter-disciplinary program, the MALS program has decided to launch a Concentration in the Medical Humanities in the 2024-2025 academic year.