The School of Humanities and Social Sciences is one of the largest and most diverse schools at Salt Lake Community College.
Fourteen disciplines are organized into five departments, including Humanities, Language, Culture, American Sign Language, History, Political Science, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, Family and Human Studies, Education, Social Work and English.
Under the English Department is the Student Writing Center, providing in-person and online writing advising for all SLCC students enrolled in any class, and the Publication Center, a multifunction space that allows faculty to incorporate publication activities into their classes. The Department also sponsors Folio, a student literary magazine.
Part of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences is the Community Writing Center, which is deeply involved in both the college and the larger community, supporting and educating community members of all abilities and backgrounds who want to use writing for practical needs, civic engagement, and personal expression.
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences offers classes at most SLCC campuses and in a variety of formats, including face-to-face, fully online, and hybrid.
Many of our classes have a “service learning” component. We work extensively with community partners. For example, the Social Work Program places students in internships in over 60 community agencies. The History Department offers internships at the Utah State Archives and the ASL/I programs offers students internships with a variety of groups, as does the Political Science program.
We also recognize that learning takes place in a variety of settings, not just within a classroom. Thus, each year we hold a Student Philosophical Conference, a Student Conference on Writing and Social Justice, a Symposium on Religion and Culture and a Social Science Conference. We regularly sponsor lectures, discussions, and readings on a variety of subjects, from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, to the current activities of the National Security Agency (NSA).
Each year we undertake new initiatives. One of the most important this coming year will be Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), which will emphasize the importance for student learning of writing as a part of the curriculum in classes in all subjects. Other initiatives for the year include an expanded food bank operation to serve SLCC students and expanding last year’s Race Card Project to continue to examine the realities of race and racism in the United States today.
Given all of this, our conception of the mission of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences is large, and perhaps audacious.
We seek to serve the increasingly diverse group of students who come to SLCC, and we take the idea of “inclusion” seriously. We seek to prepare all of our students for jobs and careers.
We seek to help students flourish not only in a material sense, but intellectually and as human beings, preparing them to live and participate meaningfully in a pluralistic democratic society and in a rapidly changing global society.
We seek to produce world citizens who understand global issues, have the competence and the motivation to seek to do something about them, and can engage in meaningful dialogue across cultural boundaries.
In support of this, we try to create a rich academic environment and to cultivate in our students an appreciation for the life of the mind. We seek an open environment where students see themselves as active learners who can take intellectual risks; where their curiosity can bloom and grow and where they accept responsibility for their own learning, discover and pursue their passions, and make their own knowledge. Central to this enterprise is critical thinking, and we intend that it inform the entire spirit of our school’s pedagogy.
Fundamentally, then, we intend that education within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences be a continuing effort to examine our lives, our relations, our communities, and our futures; that it be an education that will reveal hidden ways of thinking and suggest alternative frameworks and better ways of working and living in a complex and ever-changing world.
A large part of the School’s mission is transfer education—preparing students to transfer and succeed at four-year colleges and universities, with many of our departments having close working relationships with four-year institutions across the state.
For example, our Education Department has worked with the University of Utah’s Education Department to develop a curriculum and course of study that allows students who complete two years of study at SLCC to transfer to the University of Utah and complete their B.A. degree in two more years.
We have a scholarship program with the University of Utah and local school districts that provides tuition waivers for students who plan to major in education and have a particular interest in multicultural education.
Our Social Work program works closely with the Social Work Department at the University of Utah so that when our students who have earned degrees in social work apply for admission to the University of Utah’s social work program, a vast majority are accepted and graduate two years later.
Part of our School’s work is also career and technical education.
Our Education Department not only prepares students who seek to be elementary school teachers to transfer to four year institutions, it also prepares students for jobs in preschool education, and it serves those already working in that field who seek to upgrade their skills. Likewise, the English Department offers a Writing Certificate of Completion for students seeking to prepare for jobs that require a certain level of writing ability and for those already working who seek to upgrade their skills.
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences also serves students well because of the high quality of our faculty. We have 90 full time faculty and 250 adjunct instructors. They all have at least a master’s degree in their field, and many have a doctorate. They are fine teachers, deeply knowledgeable in their fields, and productive scholars. They regularly present papers at professional conferences, publish books, articles and other kinds of writing, and regularly win awards for their teaching, curriculum development, and professional accomplishments.
For a fuller look at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, visit our webpage at http:/www.slcc.edu/schoolofhumanitiesandsocialsciences/
