Millsaps College inaugurated an Adult Degree Program to compensate for the predicted diminishing number of traditional age students and to establish a degree program incorporating a number of innovations of value to working adults. Issues considered before implementing the program included the impact of such a degree offering on existing programs, the program's effect on Millsaps' reputation, the possibility that Millsaps' reputation as an academically demanding institution might be threatening to prospective students, and the effect of the tuition at Willsaps being substantially higher than tuition at public institutions. Millsaps was then selected as a grant recipient by Mary Baldwin College's Adult Degree Program Dissemination Project. To gain faculty support, a faculty advisory committee was appointed to work with the director of the dissemination project. The committee decided that a separate degree was desirable, non-graded credit for prior learning should be awarded, and the directed study option should be expanded in the proposed program. A Directed Study Agreement Handbook was developed, and the policy was established that faculty members directing independent studies should receive overload compensation. Eight months after the committee was formed, the Adult Degree Program, leading to a new degree--the Bachelor of Liberal Studies, was established. (YLB)