Mission Statement
The faculty of the School of Humanities and Fine Arts affirms the
Catholic, Benedictine, and liberal arts traditions of the Saint Vincent
College community. Its constituent departments—English, Fine
Arts, History, Liberal Arts, Modern and Classical Languages,
Philosophy, and Religious Studies—are allied in the conviction that
higher education is a methodological as well as a creative
process. Drawing upon Abbot Boniface Wimmer's precept that a
person should learn "first what is
necessary, then what is useful, and finally what is beautiful," its
teachers invite students to participate in investigations of the world
and the self, and to consider discovery and learning in the light of
spiritual development.
Four goals are the heart of this School's mission:
- Providing students a challenging yet welcoming interdisciplinary learning environment;
- Initiating students into regional, national, and international communities of thinkers and doers,
- Empowering students to contribute to the common good in worlds beyond the classroom and campus; and
- Enhancing students' understanding of and respect for the importance and richness of Catholicism, both as a tradition and as a way of daily living.
The School of Humanities and Fine Arts plays a significant role in
the Saint Vincent curriculum because the process of seeking answers to
life's most important questions demands skills and competencies beyond
the fulfillment of
requirements. Students are thus guided in assimilating a critical
familiarity with the past, literacy and creativity springing from a
developed sense of aesthetics, fluency in thought and expression,
ethical judgment rooted in an awareness of community, and spiritual
sensitivity and acumen. Faculty members in the School realize that an
ongoing quest for truth, beauty, and goodness endows the learning
process with meaning, and that this meaning manifests itself in nature
and culture, in poetry and politics, in tradition and innovation, in
commerce and scripture.
Valuing reason, creativity, and faith as critical parts of the learning
process, faculty members in the School of Humanities and Fine Arts
strive to reflect the motto of the college: veri justique scientia
vindex (Knowledge vindicates Truth and Justice).