The BLS News
Course Restrictions Have Been Repaired
If you were denied registration in a BLS class in the last couple of days, try again!
Advising & Registration
Spring 2010 registration has begun. Be sure to register for both Spring sessions!
Fall 2009 Class Dates
BLS & Main-Campus sessions.
The BLS Facebook Page
Stay in touch! Become a fan!
The BLS Office has Moved
…to 123 & 124 McIver Building.
Congratulations to our August 2009 Graduates!
• Arzima Brewer
• August Elliott *
• Angela Grant
• Lauren Kemp * (Germany!)
• Kecia Parker
• Marcia Salazar (Nicaragua!)
• Jon Stickel **
• Cary Thelen (San Francisco!)
BLS Grads Elected to ΦΒΚ
Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society has elected five BLS students from the classes of 2008 and 2009. Congratulations!
BLS Student Portfolio
Keep copies of your major BLS papers in the Content Collection folder in Blackboard. If you don't have a Content Collection tab, call 6TECH at 336.256.8324.
Research Skills Tutorial
Sharpen your research skills with Finding It! A Research Skills Tutorial.
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The BLS Advantage
An Online Humanities Major
All BLS Courses are 100% Online
Online UNCG courses use the Blackboard™ platform. BLS courses do not require on-campus orientations, meetings, or tests, so you can take your BLS classes anywhere you can get a good internet connection. Students have taken BLS courses from all these locations (to name just a few):
- Shanghai, China, -and- Dharamsala, India
- Bamberg, Germany
- Paris, France
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Managua, Nicaragua
- Los Angeles, California (and other West Coast locations)
- North Carolina, from the Smokies to the Outer Banks!
Small, Interactive Classes = Individual Attention
BLS classes are generally 25-30 students (not 250-300!), which means you get more individual attention from your professors. Classes are interactive, not impersonal; this is an online program where you will actually get to know your classmates!
Students in BLS classes participate in the dialectical process with engaged instructors and peers, exploring and testing ideas through online discussions and peer-critiqued assignments. These are not assembly-line, lecture-and-test classes; you won't be expected to regurgitate the "right" answer on an automatically-graded test. Instead, you'll be invited to investigate complicated issues and thorny dilemmas, and to assess the relative merits and shortcomings of many possible solutions proposed by you and your peers—there may not be a right answer!
Adult Classmates and a Culture of Excellence
The average BLS student is over 30, and their ages range from the 20s to the 70s. These adult students bring the benefit of a broad range of life experience to class discussions. BLS classmates include grandmothers, military families, paramedics, performing artists, contractors, and entrepreneurs—people who know what the real world is all about, just like you.
Adult students who have seen the real world also tend to be a little more motivated than traditional students. 20% of our students have graduated cum laude or higher, and almost one in three has graduated with an honors GPA!
Study When You Want—Or When You Can
All BLS classes are asynchronous by design: You will not be expected to "attend" class at any specific time. Lecture materials are pre-recorded, so you can view them at your convenience. Class discussions are conducted through threaded forums on Blackboard, so you can participate when it fits your schedule. Even student presentations are asynchronous; you may log on before going to the office and view a presentation your classmate made last night after her bartending shift.
These classes are specifically designed for people who cannot attend regularly-scheduled classes. If you travel for your business, work irregular hours—even the infamous shifts in the emergency services—as long as you have some time to spare at your computer, BLS courses are compatible with your schedule.
BLS courses are asynchronous, but they are not self-paced. Rather, they are conducted in half-semester intensive sessions, with deadlines occurring weekly or more often.
Education for Life—Not Just a Job
An Academically Rigorous Liberal-Arts Education
The BLS program won't teach you to be a nurse, or a hotel manager, or a systems engineer. The skills learned in a liberal arts program are less discipline-specific—and therefore more versatile. In the BLS program, you will hone your communication skills while discussing esoteric topics with your classmates; you will develop your problem-solving skills as you discuss the ageless quandaries that haunt humankind; you will sharpen your critical-thinking skills as you read well-written and convincing arguments with the intent to expose and exploit their weaknesses. You will learn about your human context through literature and the arts, through a critical examination of human history, theology and philosophy. You will meditate on what it means to be a human—not what to do when you're an accountant.
Not Mere Job Skills, but Versatile Career Skills
Employers are looking for the exact skills you will develop in the BLS program. That's why many potential employers require a bachelor's degree before they'll even interview you. They're filtering for the communication, problem-solving, and critical-thinking skills mentioned above, and for people they can trust to work unsupervised. Simply earning a bachelor's degree will open employment doors in many different fields, and give you access to careers that you would not have otherwise. Some employers specifically look for people with degrees in the liberal arts!
Our graduates have gone on to masters' and doctoral programs (including law schools), to administrative positions in various industries, and to promotions within the places they were already working. Many of those opportunities would not have been available to them if they hadn't completed a bachelor's degree.