Core Values

Student-centered Learning

To provide students with a humanistic and social scientific education that teaches them the languages, geographies, histories, literatures, and contemporary issues in our disciplines.
To develop students’ abilities to posit evidence-based questions, arguments, and hypotheses.
To foster students’ critical thinking and their development as engaged, open, and active learners by means of our courses and our co-curricular support network.
To use teaching strategies and innovative technologies that promote students’ independence and self-awareness and motivate them to explore answers to larger questions throughout their lives.
To graduate students who are able to communicate their thoughts clearly and effectively in both speech and writing.
To graduate students who can evaluate and synthesize information from an array of sources.

To create knowledge and advance the work of the disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
To seek and provide support for faculty to engage in scholarly and creative activity.
To support scholarship and creative activity that improves pedagogies and exposes students to informed analytical and critical skills.
To develop and implement innovative research methodologies.
To share the knowledge we gain through scholarly and creative activity with our students, our colleagues, and our intellectual communities.

To provide class materials and activities, co-curricular activities, and off-campus opportunities that foster students’ development as productive members of society with global awareness, cultural sensitivity, and social responsibility.
To create an intellectual environment that encourages students to develop a deep and critical appreciation of their own identities as members of distinctive groups as well as of interconnected communities.
To provide students with a humanistic and social scientific education that creates global citizens who are committed to preserving the human rights of all people while respecting human diversity and the plurality of cultures and societies.
To graduate students who can be effective members and leaders of culturally and socially diverse communities, teams, and organizations.

To provide instruction and instructional assistance that supports the academic success of students across the University.
To serve the University in ways that contribute to its proper functioning and to its improvement.
To promote projects that strengthen collaboration and communication among our students, departments, Colleges, and our regional, national and global communities.

To integrate classroom experience with relevant community-based experience and professional practice in ways that will prepare our students to become active, engaged citizens as well as personally-committed alumni.
To provide mentoring, service-learning and other course-related opportunities that prepare students to enter the local and global workforce.
To provide advising that will prepare students to select appropriate careers and graduate school programs and to envision for themselves established occupations as well as those not yet imagined.
To design and employ opportunities for students to develop transferable skills in scholarly/creative activity of the humanities and the social sciences, project-based learning, teamwork, social networking, and the ability to present themselves as professionals.
To serve as a resource to local and regional communities in fostering an understanding and appreciation of the humanities and social sciences, as well as in supporting community education and welfare.
To provide local, regional, national, and international communities with opportunities both on- and off-campus to engage intellectually and professionally with the scholars and students in our College.