The major in English at Columbia College Chicago is a career-focused interdisciplinary experience in the liberal arts. Students complete 39 hours of coursework in imaginative literature, professional and technical writing, and creative writing, refining their abilities as critical and creative thinkers and as highly proficient composers and interpreters of written, visual, and digital texts. Courses for the major from outside the department combine with ample opportunity to complete a minor or a second major to further prepare students for a broad range of career options in growing fields such as technical writing, language and literature education, law, marketing, non-profit services, arts and culture institutions, and other professions that require excellent skills in communication, human understanding, research, and evidence-based analysis.

English majors should develop the professional and humanistic expertise that employers increasingly value in the rapidly evolving 21st-century global workplace. The curriculum emphasizes the diversity of cultural expression and communicative practices, and it encourages the respectful inclusion of voices and values from across the rich spectrum of human life. Significant collaborative projects foster leadership, active listening, and cooperation. Internships offer workplace experiences, while the capstone course transitions students toward their post-graduation personal, educational, and career aspirations. Graduates leave the program with an adaptable body of knowledge, an array of technical skills, and the capacity to use what they know to shape thoughtful and rewarding experiences for themselves and for the communities in which they live and work.

As a result of successfully completing program requirements, students should be able to:

• understand critical concepts in literary and rhetorical studies and use these concepts productively in relevant artistic, scholarly, and/or professional situations;
• collaborate with others on complex projects, demonstrating an understanding of roles / tasks such as project leader, content writer, editor, researcher and designer;
• analyze literary and other texts with an awareness of diverse ideological, historical, aesthetic, and material contexts and perspectives;
• evaluate primary and secondary sources to pose meaningful questions about literary, professional, and other texts and discourses;
• evaluate their own work and the work of others to identify opportunities for revision, reorganization, collaboration, and presentation to achieve specific goals for themselves and for external audiences;
• produce written and spoken communication in a variety of genres and media, demonstrating an awareness of audience, aesthetic and professional conventions and purpose; and
• synthesize information and text from multiple contributors into complex projects.