English for Current Students

WELCOME TO THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

This site provides information for current students, such as course offerings for upcoming registration periods, faculty office hours for the current term, guidelines for contest and fellowship applications, graduation requirements, and what to expect from your English degree after graduation.

For general information, and to learn more about who we are and what we’re about, please visit our academic landing page.

We invite you to get involved outside the classroom

• Join Crosscurrents literary magazine as an editorial assistant, and submit your creative work for publication as well 
• Join Events in English to get 0.25 credit for planning social events for your fellow majors and minors 
• Apply for a summer research grant to pursue an independent research project. Guidelines for submission are here (English students are always well-represented in the annual list of grant winners)
• Submit your poetry, fiction, and critical essays to our annual writing contests
• Hang out with your peers and faculty at department game nights, coffee hours, book swaps, and other events throughout the academic year
• Attend Wordstock, which is our annual festival of all things English, including senior presentations and awards

The benefits of an English degree

• The Myth of the English Major Barista  (Inside Higher Ed)
• Top Jobs for English Majors  (monster.com)
• In the Salary Race, Engineers Spring but English Majors Endure  (New York Times)
• Why ‘Worthless’ Humanities Degree May Set You Up For Life  (BBC)
• 11 Reasons to Ignore the Haters and Major in the Humanities  (Business Insider)
• The Best Argument for Studying English? The Employment Numbers  (Atlantic Monthly)
• 5 Things You Can Do in College to Stand Out in the Job Market as a Writer  (Dear English Major)
• Why I Hire English Majors  (Huffington Post)
• Why English Majors are the Hot New Hires  (OpenForum)
• 5 Ways to Turn That English Degree Into a Real Job  (Fiscal Times)
• Should I Major in the Humanities?  (The Atlantic)
• Why Every Tech Company Needs an English Major  (readwrite.com)
• The Business Case for Reading Novels  (Harvard Business Review)
• A Top Medical School Revamps Requirements to Lure English Majors  (NPR)
• STEM Leaders Praise the Humanities  (The Humanities Toolkit)

Get to know your professors!

We welcome the opportunity to get to know more about your interests and goals, and to talk through your course-related questions and ideas. Below are faculty drop-in office hours for the current term, and we are also available by appointment. We look forward to hearing from you!