Offering an intellectually stimulating curriculum to a diverse community of learners, the English department delivers those benefits of a liberal arts education outlined in the university’s overall mission statement: “to challenge and support students in their intellectual, spiritual, personal, and professional development.” The department achieves these goals by offering a variety of courses designed to address literary content and reading and writing skills. More specifically, courses within the department help students develop the capacity to do the following:

• Read literature with greater understanding and appreciation;
• Write more effectively about literature and/or within various professional fields;
• Do research efficiently and honestly;
• Recognize major literary figures and/or works;
• Deal accurately with historical generalizations about literary periods; and
• Assess the value of various critical approaches to literary and humanistic questions.

The English department offerings prepare students for a lifetime in which their gifts and skills as readers and writers will not only help them succeed and advance professionally, but will also aid them in making their personal lives more pleasurable and meaningful.

General Department Goals
English majors will be able to:

• Read with comprehension and aesthetic appreciation, think critically about and respond to texts from a variety of genres and periods, and articulate why they respond the way they do to the readings; 
• Produce written documents that demonstrate an understanding of the role audience, context, and purpose play in determining rhetorical choices. Further, these documents will demonstrate the ability to state and develop a thesis; to employ an effective organizational scheme; to write unified and coherent sentences and paragraphs; and to edit for correctness in grammar, punctuation, usage, and mechanics; and 
• Conduct and then incorporate research done through a variety of media in order to develop and support positions they take in written and oral communication.
  The English department sponsors MUSE, the English club; a chapter of the National English honor society, Sigma Tau Delta; and Mosaic, a student magazine of creative work.

Majors/Minors Offered:
English Education Major
Literature Major
Literature with Writing Emphasis Major
English Minor