SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND GRADUATE STUDIES (Humanities)

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Vision

The School of Humanities offers a liberal arts education that introduces students to the great aesthetic, moral, and intellectual traditions of humanity to provide a basis for reflecting on, appreciating  and living a quality human life amidst the challenges of the 21st Century.

Mission

The School of Humanities houses the Departments of English and Mass Communications, Foreign Languages and Literatures, Philosophy and Religion, Visual and Performing Arts, and the Horace Mann Bond Honors Program.  Each department and program is committed to promoting an appreciation of the arts via studies in the humanities disciplines.  In keeping with the mission of Lincoln University to provide quality education with an international focus, the School of Humanities embraces the belief that a university education must promote an appreciation of cultural diversity and the Humanities curriculum must focus on the delivery of a liberal education with a global perspective.  This commitment is realized in curricula, faculty and student diversity, intensive foreign language programs and study abroad opportunities.  The Horace Mann Bond Honors Program reaches across disciplines to recognize and promote high scholarly achievement among students.

The faculty within The School of Humanities recognizes the significance of the humanities in a technological society.  Therefore, within the humanities disciplines, students are provided with academic, aesthetic and technical challenges to achieve excellence.  The Humanities core and each major degree program has three basic emphases: 1) critical thinking skills that prepare students to make informed judgments and to find rational solutions to problems; 2) research skills that enable students to find, evaluate, organize, synthesize, annotate, critique, and edit information and effectively communicate new ideas through written, verbal, and visual means; and 3) knowledge and awareness skills appropriate for ethical reflection in a world of diverse peoples, cultures and values, enabling students to appreciate and tolerate differences while grasping and addressing the many challenges facing humanity.

Philosophy

Students are expected to acquire

1. Proficiency in reading, writing, speaking and critical analysis as crucial to success in higher education and gaining access to career opportunities.
2. Proficiency in a selected foreign language as a cultural universal and as a medium for communicating with others and appreciating cultural diversity.
3. Critical thinking skills through philosophical and other forms of inquiry that will empower them to examine basic beliefs and values that impact a global society.
4. Knowledge of the religions of humankind, in order to appreciate human spirituality and the human quest for answers to existential and eschatological questions. 
5. An appreciation of art, literature and music from an historical and contemporary          perspective, thereby highlighting human creativity as a source of truth that transcends time and culture.