Bachelor of Arts in Global Skills, Sustainability, and Regeneration Ubiquity University

The world is getting better and better, worse and worse, faster and faster. Turbulence, change, and upheaval are now constants in a world of what scientists call hypercomplexity, where everything is now interconnected with everything else, and events anywhere can ricochet sudden and unpredictable events through the global system.

In this maelstrom of change, the world may seem broken, but you are not. You have everything you need inside you to succeed. All you need to do to succeed is equip yourself with new skills and competencies for a world in dynamic change. What dynamic change means for your future can be seen in the fact that two-thirds of the jobs 15 years ago don’t exist now, and two-thirds of the jobs now won’t exist in 10 years. This means that you need to develop skills that are transferable from job to job, industry to industry, career to career. Transferable skills are what are known as Soft Skills. They are more about who you are in the world rather than what you know about the world.

• Can you creatively collaborate in cross-boundary teams?

• Are you entrepreneurial?

• Do you have emotional intelligence?

• Can you demonstrate leadership and critical thinking in complex situations?

These are the essential skills for the future and are what more and more institutions and companies are looking for. Ubiquity is here to help you activate your highest potential by training you in the essential skills and competencies required for you to navigate an increasingly complex world and work with people of many cultures and talents to solve pressing global challenges.

To equip you for the future, Ubiquity has designed the ultimate Liberal Arts program emphasizing Soft Skills and Sustainability. In most Liberal Arts schools, students take a range of subjects across disciplines. The emphasis is on a wide scope of knowledge. Knowledge is certainly important but not sufficient to equip you for the future in the grip of runaway climate change and political-socio-economic upheaval. We seek to activate student potential rather than simply disseminating knowledge. We want to support you in making a real difference in your life.

The Seven Liberal Arts & The Chartres Framework

Our Liberal Arts program is largely self-designed. This program qualifies you to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree qualification that you design for exactly the skills you need and what you want to learn. It enables you to develop knowledge and understanding within and across specific subject areas that, along with the Soft Skills, can be transferred anywhere, anytime. It is a combination of learning, self-reflection, and social impact.

Ubiquity’s Liberal Arts program is based on what we call the “Chartres Framework.” As an educational institution, Ubiquity University traces its lineage back to Plato’s Academy, founded in 387 BC in ancient Athens. It was Plato who, with his student Aristotle, created the seven Liberal Arts initially conceived by Pythagoras a hundred years before. The seven Liberal Arts these philosophers developed– Grammar, Dialectics, Rhetoric, Music, Mathematics, Geometry, and Astronomy -became the basis of education in western civilization and is more relevant today than ever.

It was in Chartres, France, in the 11th and 12th centuries, that the Chartrian Masters brought the western tradition of the Liberal Arts to their highest refinement. Ubiquity has established its own Chartres Academy to honor this tradition. It has reworked the traditional knowledge-based Liberal Arts into a new form of Liberal Arts based on Soft Skills, Sustainability, and active engagement to solve pressing global issues.

In this program, we seek to blend the ancient past with the far future to give us perspective on the present challenges we face, from climate change and accelerating technology to other global forces that redefine the human experience. The burgeoning global economy represents the convergence of physical, biological, and digital systems in ways that are full of both potential and peril. We need a new generation of thinkers and doers who are equipped to cope with these fundamental changes that are coming at us at lightning speed. We need new skills to collaborate in solving pressing global challenges creatively.

Program Goals

True learning is about remembering who you are, activating all your intelligence, and unleashing your potential. We are committed to helping you activate your deepest passion in relation to the global challenges that our generation must solve.

Our grounding in the Liberal Arts is reflected in Ubiquity’s Chartres Framework. In addition, we have mapped the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to the Framework as well so you can focus on developing skills that will help you solve these major challenges. We offer certain core courses on top of which you can take electives through Ubiquity, our approved partners, or courses that you can import from outside providers with Ubiquity’s prior approval. This framework gives you the “territory,” and you are free to map your own pathway through it.

Program Outcome

By the end of this program, you should be able to:

• Understand yourself, your unique talents, and your place in the world.

• Articulate the connections between ourselves, our planetary home, and our place in the universe.

• Use a variety of essential skills to accelerate your own development as a lifelong learner and improve your prospects in pursuing your personal goals.

• Apply a cutting-edge set of tools and skills to create change in humanity’s consciousness to contribute to building a more sustainable and regenerative world.

Program Design

The Ubiquity BA Degree in Global Skills, Sustainability, and Regeneration comprises 120 credits made up of 40 study courses.

The study courses are made up of two groups:

Core Courses (24 Credits): A set of 8 (eight) core courses

1. Meeting Global Challenges – Foundation in Soft Skills, Shelly Alcorn

1. Teamwork and Collaboration – Cosmopolitan Communication, Kazuma Matoba, PhD

1. Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship – Leading Change, Cynthia Scott

1. Emotional Intelligence – Integral Flourishing Parts One and Two, Lee Mason

1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving – Critical Thinking, Linda Elder, PhD

1. Leadership – Transformational Leadership and Governance, Peter Merry, PhD

1. Building Global Community – Great Books, Jim Garrison, Ph.D., and Gyorgyi Szabo, PhD

Elective Courses (96 Credits): A set of 32 (thirty-two) elective macro-courses, or combined micro-courses or nano-courses, as well as live webinars or in-person learning journeys. Although our live webinars and in-person learning journeys are offered through our graduate school, undergraduates can also participate and receive credit.

Approved Providers

In consultation with your academic advisor, you may also take courses from the following Ubiquity Partners or other approved educational providers and import them for credit. We use the credit-hour standard. Many of the courses from the partners and other approved institutions below have a variety of hours of the content contained within them. A normal 3 credit macro-course is anywhere between 36 and 45 hours of content. You can combine hours, submit a Final Creative Assignment and pay a $100 per credit fee to have these courses added to your degree program.

Whether you would like to take an independent study option from a provider on this list or not, you will need to submit an independent study approval form for analysis regarding available credits and whether the program meets our educational standards.

Courses taken need to correspond to the Chartres Framework, the liberal arts, and the SDGs.

Partners

• UNSDGLearn – United Nations SDG Course List

• Academy of Inner Science – Thomas Hubl

• Integral Transpersonal Institute – Integral Transpersonal Psychology

Approved Sources

• SDG Academy – Free education from SDGAcademy and their partners

• MIT OpenCourseWare – Free education from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Class Central – Free education from major universities

• OpenCulture – Free education from various providers

• Gaia Education - Leading provider of education for sustainability

• SoundsTrue - Various courses available for you to explore.

Creative Assignment:

Whether you take a course from us or are importing from an external source, you will be required to submit a Final Creative Assignment for grading, which contains both intellectual elements through writing and artistic elements through the medium of your choice.

Dissertation

At the end of your degree, you are requested to write a dissertation, which must not exceed 10,000 words.