To provide appropriate pedagogies - including class size - and environments (classrooms, equipment, resources, and technology) that will lead o student retention and success as well as an increase in the number of majors and minors. To help students see themselves as professionals, as part of a discipline with skills and abilities valuable in the business, teaching, publishing, or post-graduate work. To give students a sense of themselves as citizens of a larger community by encouraging participation in service learning and in diverse and international course work and programming. To assure that students encounter creativity crucial to English studies through theater productions, readings by professional writers, and their own creative and critical production and presentation. To balance the needs of general education - communication, diversity, global perspectives, interdisciplinary studies - with those of the major. To acquire adequate funding to support the department's contributions to general education and the liberal arts through departmental budgets and hiring.To value faculty scholarship and service through greater support for and participation in activities of the profession.