Department Overview

The English Department's essential goal is to help students develop reading, writing, research, and critical thinking skills that they may use in other classes throughout the college, at transfer institutions, in their careers, and in their lives. Language is one important means of expressing ideas, communicating them to others, and articulating them to oneself. Being able to use language in this way is a crucial part of being a citizen of a democratic society and a participant in the modern world. Some of what we read and study in English classes takes the form of literature (imaginative writing such as stories and poems). Literature tries to mirror or in some way match the richness and complexity of actual experience. Being able to read literature, we think, enables one to participate more fully in the richness and complexity of life.

Our strategies for helping you, our students, to develop these skills include a supportive, student-centered environment, a meaningful, up-to-date curriculum, and clear objectives and expectations. Recognizing and valuing the diversity of our students, our society, and our world, we mirror that diversity in what and how we teach. We view the community college as a democratic institution that gives everyone the chance to learn and to grow.