Office of the Dean
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The liberal arts have shaped The University of Texas at Austin since it opened its doors in 1883, and the College of Liberal Arts is where that founding purpose still lives today.
From the languages we use to communicate with each other, to the social sciences that explore how we inhabit the world, to the humanities that illuminate who we are and why we’re here, the liberal arts work together to help us make sense of our humanity.
The liberal arts have also shaped my own life. I came to this country from Argentina when I was eighteen. The liberal arts education I acquired here prepared me to navigate my new home, and has since carried me through studying and practicing law, running a business, earning a PhD, and now researching, teaching, and helping to administer a college.
One thing I have learned in that time, in all those different spaces, is that the need for people who can think clearly, adapt, and act with integrity doesn’t change, even as our society – and the tools and technologies with which we engage the world – changes dramatically. If anything, now more than ever we need people who are adaptable, who can think both broadly and deeply, who can exercise critical judgment, and who can bring a wide range of knowledge to bear to find creative solutions to complex problems.
In a time of rapid and dramatic technological, economic, social, and political change, an education in the liberal arts is more vital than ever.
Our students have access to forty majors and more than three dozen languages. They can explore the humanities, social sciences, languages, and several interdisciplinary fields. Each discipline gives our students a particular lens through which to examine and understand the world. They can then bring this lens to serve Texas and the globe through research, internships, experiential learning, and service projects.
Liberal Arts Longhorns develop their capacity to understand, engage with, and shape a world that is changing more quickly than ever. They prepare not just to survive this rapid change, but to guide it, and to flourish as leaders, as professionals, and as citizens. They acquire the tools to build the life they choose, and the judgment to choose well.
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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Daniel M. Brinks
Interim Dean, College of Liberal Arts
David Bruton, Jr. Regents Chair in Liberal Arts
H. Malcolm Macdonald Chair of Comparative and Constitutional Law