Mission and Vision
Our Mission
To educate students to write well, think critically, and examine the world through the lenses of literature and languages
Our Vision
“The English program seeks to help prepare students to live in a complex, technological, and diverse world by introducing them to varying perspectives offered by a thorough study of literature and language. Through these perspectives, sociological and personal barriers may be broken down, and the possibilities as well as the paradoxes of human existence may be better understood. By exposing students to a study of the language and literature of other countries, the Spanish and Modern Languages program seeks to help prepare students for life in a multinational, multicultural global society.”
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We, the faculty in the Department of English and Modern Languages at Shepherd University, feel compelled in this moment to declare emphatically and unequivocally that BLACK LIVES MATTER. Ours is not a declaration stimulated by George Floyd’s brutal and horrific murder on May 25th, nor is it a response triggered by the killings of Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arbery. Those, sadly, are only the most recent examples of black lives being destroyed by widespread social, societal, and systemic racism in this country. When the first black bodies were brought to the Jamestown settlement in 1619, our nation began its centuries-long pattern of prioritizing white lives over black lives. That devaluing of black lives continues to this day. Enough is enough! Our commitment to educational equality can only begin, we believe, when we as a faculty and we as a country begin to redress longstanding wrongs by affirming that BLACK LIVES MATTER. We declare that here, now, and always. Read more.