Mission
Mission
The English Department is a multi-disciplinary unit, which contributes to the College's practical arts and liberal arts mission with an equal emphasis on artistic production and scholarly production. The Department's identity is rooted historically in the language and narrative arts instruction that it provides for all students at the College. Students who come to the English Department find their classes taught by practicing writers of all kinds -- poets, fiction writers, playwrights, scholars, critics, and essayists. Students find in the English Department, then, an environment consistent with Columbia's purpose, as stated in its mission, "to give educational emphasis to the work of a subject by providing a practical setting, professional facilities, and the example and guidance of an inventive faculty who work professionally at the subjects they teach." English full-time faculty alone have published over forty books, including works of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, scholarship, criticism, and textbooks.
Faculty members in English are poised at the intersection of the applied arts and the liberal arts -- a significant juncture where, as stated in Columbia's mission, arts and communications instruction is shaped "within a context of enlightened liberal education." To fulfill these interconnected goals of applied arts and liberal arts, the English Department negotiates the intersection between artistic consciousness and academic consciousness, a pedagogical balance committed to arts and communications instruction in an open-admissions environment. The English Department is a unit where the liberal arts are applied arts, where the academic and creative meld, and where artful teaching and artful practice are one and the same.
The English Department's ability to offer majors (Poetry and, in partnership with Liberal Education, Cultural Studies), minors (Poetry, Literature, Professional Writing, Creative Non-fiction), and LAS Core Curriculum courses, as well as a new M.F.A. program, is one of its greatest strengths. The Department offers numerous courses that fulfill graduation requirements, and these provide an indispensable service: they strengthen student literacies and maximize student chances for success in their majors and in their life after graduation. English Department faculty take pride in this service while affirming that the subjects and skills taught in LAS Core courses also constitute disciplines in their own right. In its majors, minors, and LAS Core offerings, the English Department uses process-oriented, technologically supported, cross-disciplinary pedagogical strategies to immerse students in reading, writing, and speaking practices that cultivate literary and rhetorical acumen while offering students "an opportunity to try themselves out, to explore, and to discover what they can and want to do."
Faculty members in English are poised at the intersection of the applied arts and the liberal arts -- a significant juncture where, as stated in Columbia's mission, arts and communications instruction is shaped "within a context of enlightened liberal education." To fulfill these interconnected goals of applied arts and liberal arts, the English Department negotiates the intersection between artistic consciousness and academic consciousness, a pedagogical balance committed to arts and communications instruction in an open-admissions environment. The English Department is a unit where the liberal arts are applied arts, where the academic and creative meld, and where artful teaching and artful practice are one and the same.
The English Department's ability to offer majors (Poetry and, in partnership with Liberal Education, Cultural Studies), minors (Poetry, Literature, Professional Writing, Creative Non-fiction), and LAS Core Curriculum courses, as well as a new M.F.A. program, is one of its greatest strengths. The Department offers numerous courses that fulfill graduation requirements, and these provide an indispensable service: they strengthen student literacies and maximize student chances for success in their majors and in their life after graduation. English Department faculty take pride in this service while affirming that the subjects and skills taught in LAS Core courses also constitute disciplines in their own right. In its majors, minors, and LAS Core offerings, the English Department uses process-oriented, technologically supported, cross-disciplinary pedagogical strategies to immerse students in reading, writing, and speaking practices that cultivate literary and rhetorical acumen while offering students "an opportunity to try themselves out, to explore, and to discover what they can and want to do."
