The Department of English: Goals and Outcomes Assessment

The undergraduate major in the Department of English centers on the study of literature as the focal point of a liberal arts education. Our goal is to prepare knowledgeable students who can write, think and use the written word to explore and develop ideas.

Writing and learning, language and thought are linked throughout the courses required of our English majors. To encounter some of the best writing in English is to engage some of the most significant operations of the language itself, as well as to trace the development of traditions in thought and expression that link us to the past and guide us to the future. Our faculty seeks to develop in the student a progressively more differentiated sense of literary history, a more discriminating sense of literary value, and a more sophisticated understanding of the cultural and social roles of literature. We believe that an increased sensitivity to literature is inevitably accompanied by an increased sensitivity to language. To maximize this benefit in our students, we cultivate their powers of written expression in courses explicitly devoted to composition, rhetoric, and in the core literature courses required of all English majors, where the essay becomes a principal means for exploring and developing ideas.

To pursue the goals detailed above, the Department has designed a cohesive program in literary history and aesthetics. The Department provides new majors with an overview of the program during the students’ first semester. Our goal is to give students a better grasp of how the major functions pedagogically. The overview consists of a sequence of four lectures:

The Study of Literature at CUA

1) Introduction to the Major

2) The Literary Canon

3) Literature and Aesthetics

4) Literature and History

Students pursuing the Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature go on to successfully complete 12 courses and a senior comprehensive examination. Core courses provide extensive reading in English and American literature, the history of at least two literary genres, the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare, and research on the work of a major author (Senior Seminar).

The Senior Seminar and the Comprehensive Exam are designed to measure student learning in several related ways.  Senior Seminar is a two-semester sequence that focuses on further developing and displaying students’ abilities to write, perform research in depth, and think critically. Each semester the student delivers an extensive presentation on the topic he/she is researching, and develops a 20-25 page essay based on their research. The Comprehensive Examination consists of three parts: Literary Terminology, History of Literary Genres, and Specific Text. The first two sections are designed to evaluate the student’s ability to bring together materials based on the sequence of core courses. In the Specific Text section the student chooses one of two works announced during the spring semester of junior year, and is tested on his/her ability to read and research a work independently. A faculty panel grades the exam.