College of Liberal Arts

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 Statement
 

Greetings from the Dean

A warm welcome to The College of Liberal Arts at Marshall University!

As you view our web pages, you will discover that the College of Liberal Arts is dedicated to improving the quality of student learning and to enhancing faculty development in teaching, research, and service. Through a strong focus on excellence in instruction, curriculum, and the academic environment, the College sustains the intellectual achievement of its faculty and students and contributes to enhancing the community, the region, and the nation.

As the largest college at Marshall University, the College of Liberal Arts shares in Marshall's distinguished record of educational achievement since 1837. During these many decades since Marshall's founding, thousands of students have majored in disciplines within the College, and many thousands more have taken courses as part of the University's General Education curriculum. Each student has benefited from the personal insight, self-expression, and creative discovery that the liberal arts offer to students who wish to explore the role of the individual and to examine the values and goals that guide social systems and political institutions within society.  

The College of Liberal Arts strives to provide excellent teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences. With a full-time faculty of 135, the College offers a varied set of courses and degree programs designed to help students fulfill their personal and career goals. The College offers students a wide range of opportunities for general education and for specialization in a major. As a large and diverse College with faculty who have expertise in a range of disciplines and who are active scholars and researchers, the College seeks to educate students in their capacity to discover new knowledge and to use that knowledge for the betterment of society.

Even though Liberal Arts is the largest of the colleges at Marshall University, the College is proud of the personal attention it offers to students. With over 50 areas of study, the College offers a wonderful array of opportunities for students to build a rich and satisfying educational experience. The faculty in the College are student-centered in their approaches to teaching, advising, sponsoring student research, and mentoring at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. While strongly supporting and promoting humanistic and interdisciplinary inquiry and fostering creativity and self-expression, the College of Liberal Arts is poised to meet the challenges of a global society through its commitment to innovative teaching and research and to explorations of the relationship of technology to the humanities and social sciences. At best and above all, the College seeks to foster in students a reflective understanding of humanity and a broader understanding of the world. To achieve these ends, the College offers students an education that integrates humanistic inquiry with analytical research, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, and communication skills.

As you explore our web pages, see what the College of Liberal Arts has to offer you as an undergraduate or a graduate student at Marshall University. We hope you will consider enrolling in the College and joining the multitude of graduates who have used their degrees for successful careers in their profession of choice. It is an exciting time for the College, and we invite you to join us in sharing many of the new developments and dynamic changes that the College is undergoing. We are committed to ongoing growth and further success as we build upon our traditions and envision and plan our future.

I invite you to visit the web pages for each of our academic departments and programs for information on undergraduate majors and minors and on our master's and doctoral graduate programs. If you have questions about specific programs, please contact the departments or programs directly. You will find their telephone numbers and e-mail addresses on each department's web page. If I, as Dean, can be of assistance to you, please contact me by telephone at 304-696-2350, by e-mail at murphyc@marshall.edu, or by mail at the College of Liberal Arts, Old Main 107, Marshall University, One John Marshall Drive, Huntington, West Virginia 25755. 

Christina Murphy, Ph.D.
Dean

Revised November 16, 2006