Humanities
Mission Statement
The faculty in the Humanities Department seek to provide students both breadth and depth in their understanding of the individual disciplines in the humanities and greater awareness of the inter-relationships among these disciplines. Students will explore numerous areas of study for the purpose of identifying their own academic interests and strengths.
Along with acquiring a solid knowledge base in a wide range of subjects, students will grow in the intellectual skills of thinking, communicating, and problem solving. The entire range of these academic challenges will be explored in the context of constructing a Christian worldview, through which the student’s individual vocation may be discovered and refined. The graduate of the Humanities programs will be, in the best sense of the phrase, an educated person.
Academic Opportunities
Students may pursue either the Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities or the Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree in Interdisciplinary Studies.
Students completing the baccalaureate in Humanities complete a core of humanities courses that include an introduction to the arts and sciences; focused coursework in history, literature, diversity studies, and performing arts; foreign language literacy coursework; and a Global Educational Opportunities experience. As well as experiencing the breadth of training in the humanities core, students pursuing the baccalaureate in Humanities have the opportunity to pursue in depth a concentration of interest. Concentrations available for focused study include mass communication, general science, history, international studies, literature, literature and writing, mathematics, music, performing arts, pre-law, professional writing, religion and theatre. The combination of the humanities core and the focused concentration will enable students to be prepared and eligible for graduate studies in their area of interest.
Students pursuing the baccalaureate in Interdisciplinary Studies select two concentrations for focused study, one concentration in the humanities areas and a second concentration in a broader range of arts, sciences, and professional studies. Students also complete a core of courses in philosophy and liberal arts that allows them to explore, understand, and appreciate the interdisciplinary connections between their concentrations. Students seeking the Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies also complete a foreign language literacy requirement.
Career Opportunities
The humanities baccalaureate degrees not only prepare students for rich personal and academic growth, they prepare students to enter into the work world with the competencies that the marketplace is seeking: the ability to communicate clearly and effectively in writing and in speech, the ability to think creatively and critically, the ability to analyze and solve problems, and the ability to work effectively and constructively with others. Numerous career options are described in the following sections related to the individual concentrations available to the humanities and interdisciplinary studies majors.