Our largest-ever fundraising campaign is ambitious, visionary, purposeful — worthy of the name “Victors.” The $400 million goal is built upon the cornerstone of the liberal arts: the idea that a powerful, pragmatic education can transform hearts and minds, can solve problems in a changing world, can yield ideas and innovation across every discipline. That’s why we are focused on raising money so that the best and brightest minds can have access to the College through robust scholarship support, no matter their financial circumstances. So too are we committed to helping every student acquire not just knowledge in the classroom, but experiences outside the academy including innovative entrepreneurial efforts and internships. We strive to support our faculty on the frontlines of research, and steward our planet, our community, our campus. To do all this, and so much more, the College needs you — because the world needs Victors.
THE POWER
The Department of English Language and Literature serves as an extraordinary center of creativity, inquiry, and discovery with a proud tradition of leadership in scholarship and teaching. Our mission as educators is to enable students to become the finest readers and writers of literary texts. Because those texts, in their infinite variety, take as their subjects our fellow humans, our histories, and our cultures, we equip our students both to read the world and write the future, with subtlety, acumen and precision. In recent years, our graduate program has moved up dramatically in the national rankings and our MFA program ranks second in the country. Building upon our successes, our goal is to enhance our prominence in the field as a curricular and intellectual leader.
THE OPPORTUNITIES
Our department has a long and continuing history of teaching excellence. We have more working Golden Apple winners—the highest honor bestowed by undergraduates across the University—than any other department on campus. We are tied with a department twice our size for the most Thurnau Professors, the highest teaching honor the University bestows on its faculty. We teach students about the English language and to read—and re-read—carefully, appreciatively, and critically. Students learn to watch and make meaning unfold, and come to appreciate that knowledge is made through cycles of deepening attention, never simply ‘down-loaded.’ With these skills of interpretation and articulation, our graduates have achieved successful careers as writers, journalists, and screenwriters. Many more have used their skills in analysis and argumentation for positions in law, medicine, business, and teaching. Still others have gained insight into issues of social justice while reading texts in our courses, and have devoted themselves to creating a more just world.
THE IMPACT
Your gifts will enable us to advance our position as one of the top English departments in the country by recruiting and retaining the best faculty possible. And to remain competitive in recruiting the best graduate students, we need support to augment our fellowship program. We must also continue to develop innovative teaching initiatives, including many that reach beyond the four walls of the traditional classroom.
