The ability to communicate ideas and information is one of the most valuable assets a person can possess in a career.
The English language is a powerful tool, and those who master it are well-prepared for the multiple career changes most college graduates experience in their work lives.
English majors develop sophisticated abilities in communicating, listening, speaking, reading, writing, critical thinking, information gathering, and understanding a broad spectrum of human cultures.
This doesn’t happen just in the classroom. USF students see the world of literature come to life!
U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, Tobias Wolff, Eavan Boland, Mary Gordon, Tillie Olsen, and Li Young Lee, among others, have read and discussed their work with students at USF’s annual Undergraduate Conference on English Language and Literature.
Students from institutions such as Barnard, Harvard, Northwestern, Sarah Lawrence and the University of Illinois as well as USF have participated in this conference, where undergraduates annually present their own scholarship to an audience of peers and professors.
USF students have earned internships at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, the Options Trading Corp., Easter Seals and law firms to name a few.
The Writing Internship allows students to earn academic credit for applying their skills in real-world settings.
A variety of courses, small class sizes, and dedicated professors all served as hallmarks of the English program for me, but my experience as an English major at the University of St. Francis was greatly enhanced because of the commitment and dedication of the professors. The small class sizes certainly helped them get to know us as students better and allowed us to open up and share ideas.
These professors not only treated each of us, as students, as individuals, but they truly worked to learn about our individual interests and to help us apply our interests within our areas of study. Because of the influence of my English professors, I feel that I have been more successful in applying effective teaching methods within my own career as a high school English teacher.”