Office of the Dean
This caption describes the image above.
This caption describes the image above.
The liberal arts have been a part of The University of Texas at Austin since its founding in 1883, and the College of Liberal Arts is now an extraordinary community of students, faculty, and staff, all dedicated to thinking and learning and flourishing. What starts in the College of Liberal Arts changes the world. Every student who attends the university, regardless of major, will undertake core coursework in our college during their undergraduate years. This includes classes in writing and the humanities, in history and government, and in the social sciences.
We offer the lasting virtues of a liberal arts education at a public research university: engagement, at scale, with creative research and scholarship, and with teaching and learning in a variety of disciplines, all across the humanities and the social sciences. All require our students to think carefully and often collaboratively about ideas — in classrooms, in laboratories, and in a remarkable network of communities. We take seriously the significance of our human ability to express ourselves in languages; we care about all the different ways people are categorized and how they group and are grouped; and we are interested in how those groups are structured and how they create value. What is meaningful? We reflect and we wonder; we consider and we interpret.
Our college’s breadth and depth make it ideally suited to the needs of a state with a dynamic population and a growing economy and exciting future. We offer forty majors, some about as old as the University, others responsive to more recent changes in the world. The value of the liberal arts thus extends far beyond the 40 acres. COLA prepares students to reason critically, to analyze problems, to consider different starting points, and to draw upon contributions from a range of populations, past and present. Our college encourages its students to be creative and flexible leaders, citizens, and workers, committed to making life better for everyone.
Students in COLA learn by acting, by working side-by-side with each other and with faculty on research and scholarship and in service projects in Texas and around the world. They also gain valuable workplace experience as interns in corporations, nonprofits, and the government sector. Year after year, liberal arts students represent the largest contingent of student leaders on the UT Austin campus.
The liberal arts provide intellectual power and talents, encouraging our students to inquire and to explore. We engage texts from across time and around the globe, and engage also with arguments and issues from today and nearby, domestically and even locally. We ask our students to experiment and gather data, to study, and to understand. The College of Liberal Arts is here to help students find and make meaning.
I hope that your connection to the liberal arts goes deep and is unforgettable, and my ambition is that your time with us leads you to think, and indeed to know that you’re becoming your best self.
The liberal arts have been a part of The University of Texas at Austin since its founding in 1883, and the College of Liberal Arts is now an extraordinary community of students, faculty, and staff, all dedicated to thinking and learning and flourishing. What starts in the College of Liberal Arts changes the world. Every student who attends the university, regardless of major, will undertake core coursework in our college during their undergraduate years. This includes classes in writing and the humanities, in history and government, and in the social sciences.
We offer the lasting virtues of a liberal arts education at a public research university: engagement, at scale, with creative research and scholarship, and with teaching and learning in a variety of disciplines, all across the humanities and the social sciences. All require our students to think carefully and often collaboratively about ideas — in classrooms, in laboratories, and in a remarkable network of communities. We take seriously the significance of our human ability to express ourselves in languages; we care about all the different ways people are categorized and how they group and are grouped; and we are interested in how those groups are structured and how they create value. What is meaningful? We reflect and we wonder; we consider and we interpret.
Our college’s breadth and depth make it ideally suited to the needs of a state with a dynamic population and a growing economy and exciting future. We offer forty majors, some about as old as the University, others responsive to more recent changes in the world. The value of the liberal arts thus extends far beyond the 40 acres. COLA prepares students to reason critically, to analyze problems, to consider different starting points, and to draw upon contributions from a range of populations, past and present. Our college encourages its students to be creative and flexible leaders, citizens, and workers, committed to making life better for everyone.
Students in COLA learn by acting, by working side-by-side with each other and with faculty on research and scholarship and in service projects in Texas and around the world. They also gain valuable workplace experience as interns in corporations, nonprofits, and the government sector. Year after year, liberal arts students represent the largest contingent of student leaders on the UT Austin campus.
The liberal arts provide intellectual power and talents, encouraging our students to inquire and to explore. We engage texts from across time and around the globe, and engage also with arguments and issues from today and nearby, domestically and even locally. We ask our students to experiment and gather data, to study, and to understand. The College of Liberal Arts is here to help students find and make meaning.
I hope that your connection to the liberal arts goes deep and is unforgettable, and my ambition is that your time with us leads you to think, and indeed to know that you’re becoming your best self.
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David Sosa
Interim Dean, College of Liberal Arts
David Bruton, Jr. Regents Chair in Liberal Arts
Louann and Larry Temple Centennial Professor