Who We Are
The College of Arts and Scienceswith 15,000 students and 500 facultyis the academic heart of an unstoppable university. We are a passionate, engaged community of scientists and scholars dedicated to the idea that a broad, liberal arts education provides a personal and professional advantage to individuals and is the basis of a free society.
Vision and Priorities
The College of Arts and Sciences aspires to:
- Deliver quality education with an emphasis on community engagement and student success;
- Achieve and sustain excellence in academic fields where we are capable of establishing national and international prominence; and
- Expand our research enterprise through innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship that effectively addresses societal grand challenges.
The College is divided into three schools, each representing a different perspective on the world.
- The School of Humanities includes all of the traditional humanistic disciplines. Its faculty focus on the following interdisciplinary topics: Science, Medicine and Society; Globalization, Migration and Citizenship; Film, Media and Literature; the Origins of Modernity; and Ethnicity, Gender and Culture.
- The School of Social Sciences has a unique emphasis on applied research and community engagement, both locally and globally. Its interdisciplinary focus includes Inequality and Social Justice; Globalization, Citizenship, and Sustainable Development; Information Science and Knowledge Generation; Urbanization and Healthy Communities; and Human Biological and Cultural Diversity.
- The School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics has identified key interdisciplinary research clusters associated with the impact of science on society. These clusters are Biomedical Science; Materials Science; Global Change Sciences, Computational Theory and Practices; and Science, Technology and Mathematics Education.
You can help the College of Arts and Sciences achieve its 21st century vision. With your support, we will be unstoppable.
Improve the Quality of Undergraduate Education
Undergraduate Scholarships. The education of USF’s undergraduate population—95 percent of all USF undergraduates take classes in the College—is of paramount importance to us. We seek to attract and retain the best and brightest students from Florida, the nation and the world, independent of their ability to pay. With need-based aid waning at the federal level, we are called upon our generous alumni and friends to increase our level of student scholarship funding to attract these individuals and help them to attend USF.
Faculty Development.To stay on par with other outstanding research universities, and to ensure that we do the best job possible for our students, we must continually upgrade the pedagogical and research skills of our faculty and the teaching tools that we provide them. A separate fund for quality and innovation supports our faculty in attending programs and conferences that provide continuing professional development. These funds are also used to support the purchase of first-rate instructional technology that provide real-world learning experiences in the classroom.
Expand and Improve Graduate Education
Graduate Fellowships. Excellent graduate students are the engine that drives research initiatives throughout the college. As we seek national and international prominence in areas as varied and complex as materials science, drug discovery, nanotechnology, globalization and sustainable energy, the college will strive to attract interest from top-quality doctoral students from around the world.
Faculty Enhancement.The college’s main strength lies in the talents and abilities of its faculty. To retain high caliber faculty, as well as to attract top minds from outside the university, we will create two new endowed chairs and two new endowed professorships in areas that complement the interdisciplinary foci listed for each school above.
Grow Our Distinctive, Interdisciplinary Research Enterprise
Every community of scholars--CAS included--requires a strong infrastructure to advance its mission. This includes bricks and mortar as well as the development and design of new programs, institutes and centers. Many of the structural needs for the College of Arts and Sciences fall into this latter category.
Special College Initiatives. The College gives equal weight to the arts and the sciences. During the USF: Unstoppable Campaign, we seek to raise additional support and expansion of our Humanities Institute. The Institute focuses on enduring questions facing society, such as the meanings of diversity, democracy, citizenship and culture.
The College also plans to raise funds for the enhancement and maintenance of one of the university’s greatest natural treasures, the USF Botanical Gardens. Raising these funds will ensure that the unmatched beauty and eco-learning enterprise found in the gardens will be enjoyed by generations to come.
Academic Programs. Historically, the academic enterprise has engaged in teaching and research in a disciplined and “ivory tower” manner that did not encourage interactions across traditional boundaries. The College of Arts and Sciences is actively challenging and changing this mindset. The College is preparing the next generation of scholars for a world without traditional borders in thought and action. Our researchers are reaching across disciplines to solve real problems in communities both locally and around the world.
More specifically, by creating new interdisciplinary clusters, we will bring teamwork to teaching and fresh perspectives to research. Because they will learn to view challenges from several different perspectives, our students will enter the workforce ready to engage as leaders in their fields. And our interdisciplinary approach to research will yield creative new solutions to vexing social challenges.
Equipment. The college seeks to replace outdated equipment and purchase new technologies for new fields of research and study during the Unstoppable campaign.
The College of campaign.
The College of Arts and Sciences is creating its future and realizing its vision one student, one faculty member at a time. All that is needed now is your commitment, and together we will be unstoppable.
USF: UNSTOPPABLE
The USF: Unstoppable Campaign is a comprehensive fundraising effort by the University of South Florida to celebrate the energy, vision and future of one of the country’s most exciting and engaged universities. Our people and programs, our ideas, our research and our solutions comprise an ambitious plan to enhance health care, science, technology, education, business, the arts and global partnerships. Through creative and meaningful investment from our alumni and friends, we can translate the entrepreneurial spirit of an entire university into tangible outcomes that improve lives throughout the world.
College of Arts and Sciences Priorities:
Undergraduate Scholarships ...............................................$4,000,000
Faculty Development ............................................................. $1,000,000
Graduate Scholarships ......................................................... $2,000,000
Endowed Chairs and Professorships ................................ $6,000,000
Special College Initiatives...................................................... $2,000,000
Academic Programs ............................................................... $4,500,000
Equipment ................................................................................... $500,000
TOTAL ..................................................................................... $20,000,000
