Department of English, Virginia Tech
Overview
The Department of English at Virginia Tech is comprehensive. We offer programs in literature, language, and culture; creative writing; and rhetoric and writing. Our undergraduate program enrolls more than 500 majors. We teach numerous courses for the liberal education curriculum and offer courses for the requirements in business, engineering, science, education, and interdisciplinary studies, including Women’s Studies, Black Studies, and Appalachian Studies.
At the graduate level we offer the MA in English, the MFA in Creative Writing, and the PhD in Rhetoric and Writing. Graduate students participate in the university’s Transformative Graduate Education program and Graduate Education Development Institute (GEDI), and some complete the Citizen Scholar Program or the program in Preparing the Future Professoriate/Professional.
More than 80 faculty and nearly 50 GTAs teach our courses. Numerous faculty members have received awards for teaching, research, and outreach. We host the university’s Writing Center as well as the Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society and the Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities. A speaker series brings prominent writers and critics to campus. We support the hypertext journal of creative writing and art, The New River Journal, as well as Stephen Crane Studies. We also support the undergraduate magazines, Silhouette and BrushMountain Review.
Our outreach includes internships with the public schools and with the Pilot Street Project in Salem and a strong service learning component in many classes.
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Mission
Human beings shape and make sense of the world through creating texts—through stories and essays as well as graphics and reports. Reading, writing, and speaking are at the heart of the English Department’s mission at Virginia Tech. We believe that a strong liberal arts experience depends the development of sophisticated critical thinking skills and a honing of students’ imaginative capabilities. We believe that students must be encouraged to “dream large,” to critique the texts they encounter, to ask hard questions of themselves and others. In the classroom and in our research, we demonstrate and pass on the skills necessary to work with both imaginative literature and technical prose. This emphasis on reading, writing, and speaking, on sorting through and interpreting information, is evident throughout our curriculum. Students who take courses in English gain skills for communicating effectively, making good choices, and navigating through the world they encounter after graduation.
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Undergraduate Program
The Department of English enrolls more than 500 undergraduate English majors and several hundred minors. The majors all complete a core of courses that develop abilities in critical reading and writing and knowledge of some of the foundational works of British and American literature. They then choose one of three options for their specialization: Literature, Language, and Culture; Creative Writing; or Professional Writing. Within Literature, Language, and Culture, they choose an additional track in literature, pre-education, pre-law, or cultural studies, All of these options lead to the Bachelor of Arts in English degree.
English minors are available in Literature or Cultural Studies, Creative Writing, and Professional Writing.
An annual undergraduate research conference, a department-sponsored Study Abroad program to London, and numerous internship opportunities and service learning projects offer students multiple chances to enhance their classroom studies.
Connections with Liberal Education and Other Majors
The department teaches more than 6,000 students each semester.
- Nearly 3,000 of these students are enrolled in first-year composition (ENGL 1105, 1106, or H1204), fulfilling their Area 1 requirement for liberal education (Writing and Discourse).
- Another 1,000+ students enroll each semester in business or technical writing (ENGL 3774, ENGL 3764), fulfilling a requirement for writing intensive courses
- About 800 students complete their Area 2 requirement, Ideas, Cultural Traditions, and Values, by enrolling in our first-year reading intensive courses, such as Introduction to Poetry, Short Fiction, or World Literature, or by enrolling in advanced literature courses.
- About 200 students complete their Area 6 requirement, Creativity and Aesthetic Experience, by enrolling in creative writing
- About 100 students complete Literature and Ecology, fulfilling an Area 1, 2, or 7 requirement
English courses are integrated into several interdisciplinary majors and minors:
- Medicine and Society minor
- Black Studies
- Appalachian Studies
- Communication
- Education
- Theatre Arts
- Women’s Studies
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Composition Program
The Composition Program offers a two-course sequence (1105, 1106) at the freshman level as well as an Honors version of composition (H1204). These courses fulfill the Area 1 Liberal Education Requirement, Writing and Discourse. They also help students meet the ViEWS requirement for written, spoken, and visual communication skills. The Composition Program uses the Council of Writing Program Administrators Outcomes Statement to frame its first-year courses. It also publishes a custom textbook for the course, featuring the writing of Virginia Tech students.
The Composition Program also offers a junior-level course, Advanced Composition, and it manages the Writing Center.
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Graduate Program
The Department of English offers three graduate degrees: Master of Arts in English, Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and PhD in Rhetoric and Writing. Approximately 60 students are pursuing graduate degrees in the English Department.
Graduate teaching assistants are supported by a strong mentoring program. All graduate teaching assistants participate in the Graduate School’s “Future Professoriate” program, and a number pursue work in the Citizen Scholar Program. MFA students participate in a Writers in Residence program with the public schools. Others are active in outreach with the Pilot Street Project in Salem or in editorial work for The New River Journal, a hypertext journal of creative writing and art.
Graduate students host an annual graduate conference through the English Graduate Students Organization.
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Faculty
More than 80 faculty members and 50 graduate teaching assistants teach the courses in English. At least xx of these faculty members have won university, statewide, or national teaching awards. Three have won the SCHEV Outstanding Faculty Award (Gardner, Roy, and Sorrentino). Seven of them are featured in the collection, Teaching Excellence at a Research Centered University (Pearson 2006). [link here to a page that replicates the info on the Feast page]
Faculty members are also productive researchers and creative writers. See “Recent
Publications” for books published by our faculty in the past several
years. Research includes literary criticism, language
studies, and cultural studies, but it is also moving into new areas of English
Studies as well. One faculty member is studying training and safety for Hispanic
construction workers and developing his results into improved training materials.
Another studies how language influences the ongoing movement for gender equity
in higher education with a specific focus on
women in athletics in the past 35 years under Title IX. A third is working
to legitimize Arab American Studies within the humanities. See “English:
Making a Difference (Research).”
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Students
Students are high achievers. In spring 2007, 17 English majors were elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and five students served Ambassadors in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. A student in the MFA program, Ennis McCrery, was the graduate student representative to the Board of Visitors. More papers written in English classes were accepted for university’s spring 2007 Undergraduate Research and Prospective Graduate Student Conference than from any other discipline.
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Diversity
The Department of English celebrates diversity in all aspects of community and work and recognizes that strength and excellence depend on diversity. We offer courses that feature writers of diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and we welcome and encourage diverse students and faculty members.
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Department of English, Virginia Tech
Connections with Liberal Education and Other Majors