Academic Programs: Statements of Mission and Goals

Last Updated: February 2007

Marietta College is committed to offering programs of in-depth study that prepare students for both challenging careers and admission to well-respected graduate and professional schools. Marietta College offers majors, minors and other academic programs in those select areas that are consistent with the mission of the College and where it has the expertise and resources to meet or exceed baselines of excellence.

Undergraduate Programs

Geology

Mission

The primary mission of the geology program at Marietta College is to prepare students for successful participation in graduate school or for entry-level employment in geological, petroleum or environmental service industries. In addition to the major, the introductory geology courses are open to all students in support of the general education requirements of Marietta College. These courses are designed to develop an appreciation of science as a way of knowing and an understanding of the scientific method and applied to geological processes.

Goals

Provide all students with a sound understanding of the scientific method as applied to understanding geological processes.
Provide geology majors with a fundamental and integrated knowledge of subsurface, surface and hydrologic geological processes within the framework of geologic time.
Provide all students with opportunities to develop and exercise written and oral communication skills within the discipline of geology.
Provide geology majors with opportunities to develop and exercise written, oral and computational skills to address the application of geology to solve problems.
Provide geology majors with opportunities to develop and exercise research skills including defining problems, collecting and analyzing data, and reporting results in both laboratory and field based projects.
Provide geology majors with opportunities to develop an awareness of the economic, social, and ethical problems associated with decisions based on the analyses of geological data.
Provide students with an educational environment in which they can address global and multicultural issues, investigate models of social behavior and leadership, sharpen their aesthetic sense, and embrace their own social and personal development.

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History

Mission

Coursework in history by majors and non-majors should provide students with access to the virtually limitless realm of human experience. Students’ personal perspectives thus will be broadened and they will be prepared for responsible citizenship in a democratic society. Courses will also help students to become more effective communicators and will require that they learn how to acquire, interpret and derive meaning from a variety of historical texts. Finally, students will become discerning connoisseurs of different ideas and sources of information. Those who graduate with a major in history will be prepared specifically to teach the discipline, attend graduate school or work in other capacities as professional historians.

Goals

Both history majors and those taking history courses as part of general education requirements will acquire sound and accurate historical information including some geographical information. Such students will also be required to grasp historical knowledge that demonstrates connections between and among events, movements, personalities, and periods. History majors will be expected to move beyond information and knowledge to an understanding of how historians do their work and what it means to be a historian. All students will be able to express their understanding of history through clear and cogent writing.

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Honors

Mission

To teach students with the foundations of compositional and communicative skills that will help them to do the analytical work required in the majors.
To expose students to some of the key philosophical tenets and primary texts that have shaped Western culture so that they may better understand the undercurrents of debates and decisions that continue to shape their lives.
To provide a community of scholars in which academically strong students will find a "home" in which mentoring and advising occurs in their residence life as well as in their coursework within the Program.
To help graduate people who have come to appreciate and have a greater familiarity with the importance and vital integration of the arts and culture within civic life.
To provide students sufficient confidence in the approaches and primary texts of a liberal arts education that they may begin to go beyond those premises to engage with interdisciplinary approaches that call into question those traditional assumptions.

Goals

To inform students within the Honors Program of the historical development of the philosophical traditions that shape Western culture.
To introduce the modes of inquiry and thoughtful dissent common to higher education.
To develop greater fluency in oral speaking and analysis.
To cultivate in students the habit of being engaged within the world outside of their immediate backgrounds.
To awaken in students an interest in history and current events in order to make them informed participants within their present and future communities.
To encourage students to feel comfortable with the richness and validity of diverse approaches within the liberal arts so that they can synthesize a variety of ‘voices’.
To enforce high standards of composition and communication in order to prepare students for the analyzing and articulation that they must be prepared to do within their own majors and as future professionals and citizens.
To provide opportunities to travel that will re-enforce the sense of community within the Program.
To provide opportunities for travel that show the application of course work within the ‘real world’: history and ethics as demonstrated in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC; theatre and literature as demonstrated in Shakespearean plays enacted in Stratford, Canada; or debate and critical analysis as demonstrated in a round table discussion with an editor of the Great Books Project in Chicago.