College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

About the College

We are the largest and most diverse academic unit at the State University of New York at New Paltz. We are home to 18 departments and interdisciplinary programs, primarily in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In addition to undergraduate major courses of study and graduate programs, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences currently offers eleven interdisciplinary minor curricula, often in conjunction with other schools on campus. We are also host to allied units such as the Speech-Language and Hearing Center and the Center for Middle Eastern Dialogue. Through these programs, students develop the knowledge and skills of a liberal education and acquire focused expertise in fields of major and minor study.

Our faculty's work at New Paltz reflects their passionate intellectual and professional engagement. Together with our students, in curricular and co-curricular learning experiences, we promote reasoned, compassionate dialogue. We are devoted to students' success as lifelong learners and as engaged global citizens who will collaborate with diverse partners.

The liberal arts and sciences are enduringly relevant, for they train students to address vital human questions. Even as traditional liberal arts disciplines become more porous, integrating with greater fluency insights and methods of inquiry from multiple fields of study, they retain their purpose of educating students to think critically and creatively about complex problems. Increasingly, too, the liberal arts and sciences will take advantage of new technology to respond to age-old questions and to pose new ones. The data available to us through modern technologies can be daunting; both in traditional and new media, the liberal arts and sciences must draw intelligently and ethically on these data to understand the past and present and to shape the future.

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