德保尔大学

The Master of Arts Program in Applied Professional Studies (MAAPS), founded in 1984, serves adults who wish to design and execute their graduate study in a personally-relevant area that is otherwise not served by typical course-based, already-structured programs. These “entrepreneurial learners” come with a personal/professional area of study they want to pursue, a desire to build and manage their own learning processes, and a goal to both learn and shape their learning into contributions that make a difference.

Key Features

• You design your own area of study (an area of professional contribution in a particular setting) guided by a graduate framework. Your idea; your design.
• You learn to think in terms of learning for both intentional outcomes and timely applications.
• You build a plan for learning that incorporates an array of learning strategies (not just classes!)-strategies that fit your sought outcomes and learning preferences and result in products you can use.
• You manage the pace, place and process of implementing your plan.
• You receive assistance from a team of advisors from the University as well as your own particular professional community.
• You engage in a brief/intensive series of “liberal learning” seminars designed to rekindle and/or deepen your practice in key domains of applied effectiveness (personal, interpersonal, organizational, values and inquiry).
• You accomplish your goal of graduate study-focusing on an area of importance to you and earning an accredited graduate degree with competencies endorsed by the University.

Learning Outcomes

​Students will be able to:

• Demonstrate advanced knowledge with respect to their individualized areas of study.
• Apply reflective acuity in executing their individualized areas of study.
• Engage methods of inquiry to improve practice in their individualized areas of study.
• Take initiative to add value to their professional practice.
• Adapt and engage from an ever-broadening repertoire of responses.
• Contribute to achieve collective results.