Welcome to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the largest and most diverse academic unit at the State University of New York at New Paltz. We are home to 16 departments and programs, primarily in the Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as host or co-host to a growing number of interdisciplinary programs and other allied units such as the Speech-Language and Hearing Center and the newly formed Center for Middle Eastern Dialogue. Members of our faculty are dedicated to excellence in teaching and scholarship, and many are also well-known authorities in their disciplines. We offer 25 undergraduate majors, 33 minors, 12 content fields and concentrations for elementary and secondary education, 5 graduate programs, all sections of the first-year composition sequence, and all foreign language courses.
Liberal Arts and Sciences courses form the core of the campus-wide General Education (GE) Program, as well as most of the traditional liberal arts disciplines. In our classes, students learn to think critically and creatively and to express themselves in speech and writing with clarity and precision. In addition, our programs prepare students to become productive, responsible citizens of the world. We care deeply about the life of the mind and the meaningful exchange of ideas across disciplines. In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, students gain the foundations for a lifetime of learning.
Our graduates receive the kind of education that enables them to succeed in a great variety of professions, from television production to government, from psychology to environmental economics, from social work to publishing. Most departments coordinate on a regular basis with our Office of International Programs and our Career Resource Center to provide students with a variety of study-abroad, practica, and internship opportunities. We care about our students' lives after college as much as we do while they are here.
I encourage you to follow the web links for individual departments to learn more about our offerings. Please do not hesitate to contact me or the appropriate departments if you wish to receive more information.
James Schiffer, Dean
College of Liberal Arts and Science
