To promote critical thinking, encourage innovation and discovery and enrich the intellectual
lives of our diverse community.
Through interdisciplinary and discipline-based programs in the arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences, the college offers visionary, integrative learning and teaching environments enhanced with rapidly evolving information and communication technologies. Our graduates learn to be reflective, skilled communicators, adept at addressing contemporary problems within an ethical framework and able to adapt to a changing world. Well prepared for the world of work, our students become broadly informed and deeply engaged in local, regional and world communities.
In the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences, we are bold and place specific value
on:
We value everyone and treat people with dignity and professionalism. We make room for those typically overlooked in the higher education system. We believe that empowering one another to speak up, take risks, and act on our shared beliefs will lead the way to a more creative, innovative, and inclusive future.
We support being an engaged community where we embrace freedom of ideas, inquiry, and expression. We believe in engaging – our students, our staff, our community, and ourselves – in thoughtful research, experiential learning, and creative expressions. We believe we all achieve more when we collaborate and work together and will confidently share the good work we are doing with our community.
We know we make a difference – in the lives of our students and our community. Our community is empowered to think critically, solve creatively, and adapt to changing environments, setting us up to boldly shape the future we envision.
With our mission and values, we believe we can best achieve success by placing our
attention on three broad areas across the next three years. The Yale Gordon College
of Arts and Sciences will put emphasis on the following three areas of focus:
The YGCAS has a history of pursuing an interdisciplinary approach to teaching, which
facilitates student learning through the promotion of abilities in recognizing biases,
thinking critically, and navigating ethical dilemmas. CAS is an academic leader that
places high value on interdisciplinary programming and is well suited to foster an
integrative approach with its implementation of a flat organizational structure that
can break through some of the previously existing divisional walls. CAS will prioritize
increasing interdisciplinary thinking and directing its expertise and knowledge into
new venues to solve 21st century problems.
We will promote this area of focus by:
Some measurable action items include:
Our future success relies on our ability to foster a vibrant, diverse, and innovative
culture where every student, faculty, and staff member – as well as our local Baltimore
community – feels empowered to fully engage and contribute to our collective understanding
of the world. The YGCAS will continue to be a place where underprepared and underrepresented
students, who have often been overlooked in higher education, are welcomed and guided
towards paths for success.
We will promote this area of focus by:
Some measurable action items include:
Both the landscape of higher education and the professional workforce for our students are changing. We will embrace these changes by focusing on future outcomes. We will steer clear of a narrowed focus on job training and chart our own trajectory into new markets. We will continue to focus on advocacy, social equity, information literacy, and social justice, while being adaptable to a changing world and workplace.
We will promote this area of focus by:
Some measurable action items include:
As the University System of Maryland aims to transform and move from excellence to preeminence in its "Vision 2030" plan, we believe the college is already well ahead of this curve. By continuing to focus on our strengths—our people, our community, our programs—and further cultivating our diverse classrooms and community—we believe we are already focused on a future of growth and success.