Student Learning Outcomes

WSC Degree Program Student Learning Outcomes

As part of Westminster Seminary California’s commitment to excellence in theological education, we have several degree-specific Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs), which have been created by the faculty and approved by our Board of Trustees. Our strategy is to expose students to and train them to acquire the necessary tools throughout their degree programs so that at the end of their educational experience they will be able to:

Master of Divinity SLOs:

• Demonstrate an ability to exegete an OT or NT text that appropriately employs Hebrew or Greek (vocabulary, syntax, literary conventions); identifies the text’s central theme and argument in light of its literary context, occasion, and purpose; and relates the text to its place in the covenantal history of redemption.
• Prepare and preach a sermon that appropriately uses the biblical languages, literary analysis, historical and covenantal settings to proclaim and apply the text’s central theme in a manner that is appropriate to the church’s present cultural contexts and sensitive to the perspectives and needs of men, women, and children of diverse groups.
• Demonstrate an understanding of Reformed theology and the systematic interconnections of biblical doctrines.
• Demonstrate understanding of dogmatic development in the history of the church.
• Exhibit and / or report growing integrity, teachability, humility, perseverance, self discipline.

Master of Arts (MA) SLOs:

Core MA SLOs:

• Demonstrate an understanding of Reformed theology and the systematic interconnections of biblical doctrines.
• Give reasons for convictions rather than merely asserting them.
• Exhibit growing integrity, teachability / humility, perseverance, and self-discipline.

Specific MA Biblical Studies SLO:

Demonstrate an ability to exegete an OT or NT text that appropriately employs Hebrew or Greek (vocabulary, syntax, literary conventions); identifies the text’s central theme and argument in light of its literary context, occasion, and purpose; and relates the text to its place in the covenantal history of redemption.

Specific MA Theological Studies SLO:

Demonstrate an understanding of the perspectives and practices of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and non-Reformed Protestantism and their rationales.

Specific MA Historical Theology SLO:

Demonstrate an understanding of the main eras of church history, the significant issues and leaders / theologians of each.