
Literacies for Life and Career are the enduring skills that make the full value of an Arts & Sciences education more tangible.
WashU’s liberal arts and sciences curriculum helps students develop broad knowledge and expansive intellectual capacities through the study of human society, culture, and thought and of the physical and biological worlds. By engaging deeply with disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, students develop a critical set of skills indispensable to their future lives as leaders, innovators, and citizens of the world. The Literacies for Life and Career (LLC) comprehensive curricular and advising initiative helps students articulate and reflect on these skills gained in their Arts & Sciences coursework.
At its heart, LLC is an integrated approach to teaching and advising that prepares students to communicate the value of their liberal arts and sciences education, which exceeds the content of any discipline or major.

With its core skills finalized, Literacies for Life and Career prepares to scale up
Literacies for Life and Career (LLC) began with an ambitious goal: to identify the core skills, or literacies, that an arts and sciences education provides to students, and then to emphasize those skills throughout their undergraduate education. By the end of their time at WashU, students would be able to clearly articulate the value of those literacies, and then apply them toward their post-graduate lives and careers.

Arts & Sciences faculty integrate Literacies for Life and Career into their classrooms
During the Fall 2023 semester, Silas Johnson and Tabea Alexa Linhard were among 24 Arts & Sciences faculty to pilot the new Literacies for Life and Career initiative, which focuses on highlighting and developing key skills.
Literacies for Life and Career: Reframing the Liberal Arts and Sciences Curriculum
Faculty
are asked to designate for each undergraduate course one to three literacies, which they augment and signpost in course objectives, assignments, and assessments
Students
are made aware of and prompted to reflect on the broader, more practically applicable literacies and competencies they gain from their coursework
Advisors
are tasked to provide students with structured exercises to help them articulate their acquisition of literacies
Literacies for Life and Career aims to better prepare students to meet challenges they will face not only in the workplace but also in their engagement with critical sectors of society by helping them to develop into informed, responsible, and ethical agents.
―Erin McGlothlin Vice Dean of Undergraduate Affairs, College of Arts & SciencesGet connected.
Reach out to us with any questions you may have about Literacies for Life and Career.
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