College of Arts & Sciences > Department of English > Welcome

Welcome to the Department of English

Message from the Department Head

Thanks for your interest in the Department of English. With over 200 majors, we offer a broad-based curriculum, leading to a Bachelor of Arts in English, in which majors chose one of four tracks: literature, journalism, creative writing, and professional writing. Our Master’s program offers emphases in literature and rhetoric and composition. Regardless of your classification or track, all English majors enjoy a genuine liberal arts experience, pursuing studies in literature, composition, creative writing, and linguistics, with ample opportunity for introductory and upper-division coursework outside the major. We also offer challenging undergraduate minors in all four tracks.

While the university catalogue and this web site outline the specifics of our degree program, these media cannot fully convey our faculty’s commitment to an enriching and classroom experience. All of our faculty value teaching, both in theory and in practice. Moreover, we all recognize the need for accessibility and accountability to our students. Finally, our faculty and support staff are congenial, engaged, and genuinely interested in guiding you through your degree program.

In addition to our classroom offerings, we support forums for creative, scholarly, and pedagogical interests vis a vis the Odradek, the student literary journal; the Spectator, the campus newspaper; and Notes on Teaching English, an online teaching journal. We also host the Georgia Poetry Circuit and the Blackwater Writing Project.

Please contact me for more information about our department.

Mark Smith
Professor of English and Department Head
229-333-5946 (office)
229-563-0991 (cell)
229-259-5529 (fax)
marksmit@valdosta.edu