School of Liberal Arts

MARTIN SHAFFER, Ph.D., Dean
KEVIN GAUGLER, Ph.D., Interim Assistant Dean

Programs of Study

The School of Liberal Arts includes the following Departments: The Department of English, The Department of History, The Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, The Department of Philosophy/Religious Studies, and The Department of Political Science.

The School offers the Bachelor of Arts Degree with majors in American Studies, English, History, French, Italian, Spanish, Philosophy, and Political Science.

Mission:

The School of Liberal Arts reflects the central educational values and commitments of Marist College and of the disciplines of the liberal arts. Through their dedication to the Core/Liberal Studies program, an important component of the divisional curriculum, Liberal Arts faculty provide leadership in support of the aspiration of our institution to blend career preparation with a liberal arts education and, thus, they play a crucial role in shaping the educational experience of every student who attends Marist College.

The hallmarks of the Liberal Arts curricula are interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. While striving to prepare students to become reflective, critical, and engaged citizens, the faculty of the Liberal Arts seek to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries while respecting the integrity of each discipline. Focusing on the unity and integration of knowledge, they address issues from diverse viewpoints and create synergistic teaching opportunities with each other, as well as between the Liberal Arts and the wider Marist Community, that lead students to develop breadth as well as depth.

The faculty of the School of Liberal Arts is committed to the cultivation of the teacher/scholar, recognizing that legitimate scholarship is not confined to a single focus and that teaching excellence embraces innovative and technologically advanced forms of instruction in a variety of settings. They acknowledge the internationalization of our nation’s interests and concerns and endeavor to ensure that our students develop global perspectives and appreciation of foreign cultures, beginning with the richness and changing composition of American culture. Finally, faculty investigate new ways to illuminate the problems and questions of life, heightening student awareness of the moral and ethical implications of human existence, and help them connect what takes place in the classroom to their own lives.

Goals:

To prepare students for a productive life by helping them develop the skills of critical analysis, reflection, effective communication, and information literacy.
To foster in students an understanding and appreciation of intellectual, aesthetic, and professional creativity.
To enhance students’ learning and intellectual development through the use of technological resources.
To lead students to become informed, responsible, and motivated and to maximize their capacity to interpret events and processes as well as to help shape them.
To ground students in their own historical experience and to help them develop ways to analyze issues that challenge them as citizens.
To guide students to confront issues of social responsibility, human rights, and dignity and to prepare them to support and promote social justice.

American Studies

SALLY DWYER-MCNULTY, Ph.D., Coordinator

American Studies in an interdisciplinary program which encourages students to develop a sophisticated appreciation of the people, institutions, cultures, and ideas that makeup American society, as well as the methods and artifacts researchers use to understand them. Foregrounded in literature, history, and art, but unlimited by conventional disciplinary boundaries, American Studies draws on a broad range of knowledge to explore the meaning of “America” and how various groups of people have attempted to define, maintain, or gain power in changing historical circumstances. It invites the study of traditions, priorities, and concerns common among groups of people in various places and times, and it considers how shifting constructions of gender, race, class, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, and ability shape national identity, institutions, and memory.