College of Liberal Arts and Social Science - School of Humanities

Bryce Sullivan, Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Susan Finch, Associate Dean, School of Humanities

Vision:

The School of Humanities explores the human experience as expressed by the individual and by local and international communities. Through curricular and co-curricular activities, the faculty of the school engages students with the enduring questions of values and the struggle for fulfillment, self-expression, communication, and meaning as reflected in the languages, literature, cultures, and philosophies.

Purpose:

The School of Humanities promotes many ways to know and understand human thought, language, and culture. Because an advanced global civilization must give full value to the great branches of scholarly and cultural activity represented in the humanities, students and faculty engage in the study of specific cultures, languages, ideas, times, and places. Faculty within the school employ innovative pedagogies, technology, research, and scholarship to address the cultural and intellectual questions about what it means to be human.

Goals:

Students of the Humanities will investigate how languages, ideas, cultural practices, and values shape ways of being human.
Student of the Humanities will explore how texts, languages, and cultures influence and express human self-perceptions and communal responses.
Students of the Humanities will engage in thoughtful ethical reflection through a variety of opportunities for experiential learning.
Students of the Humanities will prepare for professional and educational opportunities in their selected fields of study, as well as begin to become life-long learners.

In addition to its major and minor degree programs, the school offers: teacher licensure in English, French, German, Latin and Spanish; the M.A. degree in English, as well as other graduate courses which support the M.Ed. degree offered in the School of Education.

The School of Humanities sponsors the following initiatives for the university community: the World’s Fair; The Belmont Literary Journal; academic lectures; convocation programs; and a variety of writing awards, including the Stacy Awalt Essay Contest and the Ruby Treadway Creative Writing Award. The faculty in the school directs several learning facilities which are important parts of the educational experience of all Belmont students: the Writing Center; the Language Learning Center; the Computer Classroom for Composition; and the Language Houses.

The students of the school participate in many curricular and co-curricular activities including: the national honor societies Phi Sigma Iota (Foreign Languages), Phi Sigma Tau (Philosophy), Sigma Tau Delta (English); student clubs, such as the French Club, the German Club, the Italian Club, the Latin Club, the Spanish Club and the English club; service learning projects; and study abroad.