The College of Arts and Sciences is a community of scholars dedicated to the idea that educated people are the basis of a just and free society. The essences of education are a capacity for and an appreciation of social change within a context of prior human achievement. The faculty of the Arts and Sciences strive to instill in their students a history of human ideas, a sense of love for learning, and an understanding of the means which scholars have used in their search for beauty and order in the natural world. The education provided by the disciplines of the Arts and Sciences is the foundation upon which the lives and professions of our students are built, and the basis from which personal growth occurs. The College of Arts and Sciences takes as its goal a melding of the natural, humanistic and social philosophies into a comprehensive whole that encourages the development of new ideas and new approaches to the understanding of our universe.
Great universities provide direction for their communities and service for their needs.
The faculty of the Arts and Sciences and the staff, who support and encourage their work, explore their scholarly interests within the home and community created by the academic society. It is the responsibility of scholars to share their discoveries for the betterment of society. Thus, the Arts and Sciences embrace disciplines that strive to make immediate use of knowledge in the service of social goals as well as disciplines whose discoveries contribute to the fund of basic information which is the steppingstone of applied knowledge. As such they can no longer remain secluded ivory towers, removed from the social problems that surround them. Recognizing this, the College of Arts and Sciences has launched the Community Initiative, a new focus that identifies the community outside the University as an integral part of its educational mission to acquire, disseminate, and apply knowledge.