Your Voyage Starts Here
GVSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) Voyage allows you explore your passions both in and out of the classroom. As a student in a CLAS major, you will have hands-on experiences that allow you to try out new interests, develop skills that will last you a lifetime, and chart a course toward your personal and professional success.
Where will your education take you?
Transforming the College Experience
Like our map? Learn more about the GVSU alumna who created it.
The CLAS Voyage ensures that you have access to real-world learning from your first days as a Laker, to graduation and beyond.
When you come to GVSU, you’ll start on your Embarking Experience. You will make new friends and discover the tools and resources you need to be a successful student.
As you begin work in your major, Experiential Learning opportunities like internships, research experiences, and study abroad are built into your courses.
Each semester, you’ll create a Reflective Portfolio where you track your growth and skills.
In your senior year, you will complete a Capstone Course where you apply what you’ve learned to a final project and prepare for your new career.
Accessible Opportunities Create Paths to Passion
"I was a first-generation college student, trying to find my place in the world at the time. Undergraduate research set me on a path that was not possible for me. It really changed my life.”
- Landon Hughes, Political Science & Sociology Major
Discover the CLAS Voyage
The Embarking Experience
Start your CLAS Voyage off strong! Through experiences both in and out of the classroom, you will be supported in your first year by creating your community, learning new skills, exploring unique opportunities, and developing confidence in your abilities.
Experiential Learning
Research, community engagement, internships, and study abroad are some of the ways the CLAS Voyage will transform your classroom learning into real-world experience. Every CLAS student will take part in at least two hands-on opportunities.
Reflective Portfolio
The Reflective Portfolio helps you build your Voyage story by tracking what you’ve learned, showing off your work, and making connections to your goals and future career—all while building digital skills.
Capstone
In your final year, you’ll complete a capstone course where you apply, connect, and share what you’ve learned on your Voyage through a final project or thesis.
Impact Spotlight
GVSU Summer Film Project
This year celebrated 30 years of the GVSU Summer Film Project, a six-week summer course that puts GVSU students to work as production crew members on a film set with professional filmmakers. This experiential learning opportunity allows for students to work on media projects at a much larger scale, learning about a board range of roles and opportunities for their future careers and working as collaborators supported by industry professionals.
- Joel Potrykus, Associate Professor, Film & Video Production