The Humanities Program

Our Humanities Department is located in the newest building on campus – our Humanities Center – which houses the library, Marcella-Sands Lecture Hall, and our College Counseling offices. With a keen eye towards skills-based learning, our Humanities courses are diverse and varied – and interesting. They’re designed to engage our students, rather then steer them towards regurgitating facts and reciting lines.

Humanities Department Skills

Reading Skills (input and processing)

• Identify different writing styles to reveal author’s message
  • Research, compare and contrast, response, narrative, persuasive
  • Differentiate between primary and secondary sources
    • And identify bias in either
• Understanding the Reading process
  • Reading for a purpose
    • Pre reading, During Reading, Post reading
    • Know the story line (overarching summary), read closely, (read with a pen/annotate), start making connections
• Identify a thesis/argument in the writing of others and write a persuasive thesis/argument.
• Identify specific evidence in persuasive writing and how an author uses evidence to support their argument
• Identify ways authors create themes and reflect on them.
  • Pathos, Logos, Ethos
• Annotating Text
  • Note taking, highlighting, interpreting text for greater meaning (connections within text or with life experience).

Writing Skills (output)

• Understand writing as a process
  • Creating questions to answer
  • Prewriting
  • writing
  • multiple revisions including writing center
  • editing
• Develop and Refine Foundational skills
  • Write a complete sentence, write a topic sentence, paragraph with topic sentence and concluding sentence, develop an argument with appropriate structure, descriptive writing
    (show not tell).
• Implement foundational skills via the following methods:
  • Research, compare and contrast, response, narrative, persuasive

Listening and Speaking

• Engage critically and constructively in oral exchanges of ideas (i.e. class discussions, peer group assignments, panel discussions).
• Offer constructive feedback.
• Participate actively and effectively in cooperative groups
• Deliver a clear, coherent oral presentation using information and diction suitable for subject, purpose, and audience.
• Show respect for the diverse dialects, traditions, and opinions of their classmates.