Master of Arts

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LMU’s Bioethics Institute offers a Master of Arts degree program that was created to respond to the many ethical challenges presented by the life sciences and health care in contemporary society.

Balancing a challenging liberal arts and sciences curriculum with a commitment to social justice, the master’s program in bioethics:

  • Invites students to reflect systematically on contemporary issues in bioethics and healthcare from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
  • Engages students in the critical analysis of bioethical topics through the interplay between ethical theory and professional practice.

Program Requirements

The Master of Arts degree requires a total of thirty credit hours of graduate coursework, completed over a program of 10 three-unit courses, including seven core and three elective courses. A traditional full-time schedule is two courses per semester, and two in the summer, to finish the degree in twenty-one months. An intensive twelve- or fifteen-month track is available for qualified candidates. In general, we follow a cohort system -- but there are flexible start dates.

The 10 required courses, 7 core courses, and 3 elective courses.

7 Core Courses

  • 6000 Introduction to Bioethics
  • 6100 Bioethics at the Beginning of Life 
  • 6200 Law and Bioethics 
  • 6300 Bioethics at the End of Life 
  • 6400 Clinical Bioethics 
  • 6600 Foundations of Theological Ethics
  • 6700 Foundations of Philosophical Ethics 

3 Elective Courses

  • 6500 Elective Topics in Bioethics 
    • Past Elective Course Offerings
      • Research Ethics (Every Summer)
      • Medicalization of Mental Health (Summer II-2020)
      • Ethics and Disability (Fall 2019)
      • Philosophy of Medicine (Summer II-2019)
      • Health Care and Justice (Spring 2018)
      • Ethics and the Brain (Spring 2016)
      • Catholic Health Care Ethics (Summer I-2015)
      • Legal and Medical Constructions of Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity (Spring 2015)