Strategic Plan

The College of the Liberal Arts offers a first-rate learning experience for its undergraduate and graduate students both inside the classroom and through a diverse set of co-curricular programs and initiatives. Students extend their academic training through events such as the School of Public Policy’s Simulation Competition, and the School of Labor and Employment Relations HR Case Competition; leadership and service organizations such as the Liberal Arts Ambassadors, the NextGen Leadership Academy, and the Graduate Alliance for Diversity and Inclusion (GADI); and professional groups like the Penn State Public Policy Association and active student clubs in departments like Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and History. Disciplinary honor societies such as Pi Sigma Alpha, Psi Chi, and the Penn State Economics Association, along with high-impact experiential opportunities including Mock Trial and debate, and faculty-led embedded and educational abroad programs from across the college, further support holistic student development.

We already have a strong infrastructure in place to foster student success. The Liberal Arts Chaiken Center for Student Success, for example, provides peer coaching and other resources to support undergraduate students to achieve their academic, professional and personal goals. That this center has become the model for similar centers in other units across campus speaks to the positive impact this center has on our students. In the Career Enrichment Network (CEN), students can explore different career opportunities, search for internships, and receive career coaching from a Liberal Arts career coach or through the Liberal Arts Alumni Mentor Program. Through the support of generous donors, undergraduate students can also receive enrichment funding through the CEN to help underwrite costs associated with internships, research and education abroad experiences. We continue to excel in our career outcomes for graduate students, with 60-70% of our graduate students pursuing career paths within academia upon graduation. Further, of our 1,028 PhD graduates from 2014-2024, 39% currently hold tenure-line positions—all in an environment where the number of tenure-line positions continues to decrease across all disciplines. Recent efforts by the Graduate Career Diversity Committee have also expanded the resources and mentoring available to graduate students seeking employment outside the academy, leading to a growing number of graduate students applying their Ph.D.-level skills in other areas, including the government and nonprofit sectors and industry.

Looking forward, continued efforts to improve undergraduate and graduate student success can be achieved through enhanced teaching and by further strengthening our support infrastructure, including financial support for undergraduate and graduate students in each year of their time in the College, as well as abundant opportunities for career preparation and engagement with the world (e.g., internships, study abroad, and research experiences).

To make progress in fulfilling this strategic priority, we will:

• Support efforts to innovate teaching methods, including training students in effective and responsible AI use that is in demand among employers;
• Increase the focus on competencies that cannot be replaced with AI in the College’s academic curricula, and in co-curricular activities such as research and education abroad. This includes emphasizing “human skills,” including interdisciplinary critical thinking, creativity, communication, global awareness and complex decision-making, while also developing a rich understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented by new technologies.
• Integrate professional development opportunities into the entire undergraduate curriculum. Use LA 283 (Professional Development for the Liberal Arts)—a course designed to assist and educate students in the College of the Liberal Arts with developing, articulating, and implementing career plans after graduation—as the cornerstone of these efforts.
• Encourage departments with graduate programs to expand and integrate professional development training and discussion of professional issues throughout the curriculum, including a focus on career pathways outside academia. Such integration could build on existing graduate-level professional development courses and job market workshops in departments and programs like Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, French and Francophone Studies, Comparative Literature, Linguistics, Political Science, Sociology/Criminology, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
• Strengthen career diversity training, including expanding the scope of career coaching through the Career Enrichment Network, for graduate students. The Grad Futures Initiative in English and the college-level Graduate Career Diversity Committee have laid important groundwork for these efforts.
• Provide the financial support needed to strengthen our World Campus and outreach portfolio. Build on recent successes (e.g., the online BA program in History) to reimagine our portfolio, including opportunities for non-credit courses and executive training for lifelong learners.
• Prioritize access and affordability by reducing financial barriers and expanding students’ ability to afford an undergraduate education and take advantage of the intellectual opportunities available at Penn State and around the world through Education Abroad and our own college-level embedded and faculty-led education abroad programs. In particular, expand the enrichment funding model run through the Career Enrichment Network.
• Strengthen the academic advising and student support infrastructure available to students—including Academic Advising, the Career Enrichment Network, the Liberal Arts Chaiken Center for Student Success, and the Liberal Arts Employer Outreach team—to promote student engagement, accomplishment, and timely academic progression for students of all backgrounds;
• Expand the number and variety of experiential learning opportunities available to students by growing internships, educational abroad programs, undergraduate research opportunities, and continuing to develop comprehensive internship programs in areas such as Harrisburg, PA (the Kleppinger Government Affairs Internship Program), and Washington, D.C. Use existing initiatives (such as the Chapel Executive Internship Program), department-level internship programs (such as the Judith Hardes Intern Fellowship in our Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) and internships with Penn State University Press (through our Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies), and college-level embedded educational abroad programs and undergraduate research opportunities abroad (such as the one through our Center for Language Science) as models for such expansion efforts.
• Expand opportunities for current students to participate in co-curricular opportunities (including museum visits and artistic performances) outside the classroom—not only on campus but also throughout Pennsylvania and the northeast region.
• Foster a holistic first-year experience to help students engage, learn and thrive in their transition to University life;
• Expand the opportunities for living-learning communities beyond first-year students, using the First Year in Liberal Arts Living Learning Community in Geary Hall as a model for other Liberal Arts themed communities, including a return of the Paterno Fellows Living Learning Community.
• Expand grassroots efforts at both the departmental and college levels to reach high school students throughout central Pennsylvania to promote the value of liberal arts degrees. Use existing events, such as Spend a Summer Day, programming through the Matson Museum of Anthropology, and High School German Day as models for new efforts and initiatives.

Metrics for Success:

• Increase in the number of faculty who have completed training on the use of AI for instruction and assessment;
• Increase in the percentage of courses using evidence-based or high-impact teaching practices (e.g., writing-intensive, project-based, experiential, community-engaged);
• Increase in the percentage of faculty participating in teaching development programs (e.g., Schreyer Institute, teaching workshops, pedagogy grants) and trainings emphasizing AI use in instruction and assessment;
• Increase in the number of faculty receiving University- or disciplinary-level teaching recognition;
• Increase in the percentage of students who participate in programs offered by the Career Enrichment Network, the Liberal Arts Chaiken Center for Student Success, and Alumni Mentor programs;
• Increase in the percentage of students who complete internships, undergraduate or graduate research experiences, and education abroad programs;
• Increased scholarship support for first-generation and low-income students, as well as students from historically underrepresented groups;
• Increase in endowments and enrichment funds to support student success;
• Increase in employment or graduate school outcomes 12 months post-graduation in positions that make use of the knowledge and skills related to students’ undergraduate degree programs;
• Expanded funding for graduate student research and conference travel, enabling students to build scholarly profiles, engage professional networks, and compete successfully on the job market;
• Stronger graduate student career outcomes, as measured by increased placement in positions (both within and outside academia) that require a graduate degree or advanced professional training;
• Greater tracking of job/career outcomes for undergraduate and graduate students;
• Improvement in overall student recruitment, retention, and graduation;
• Higher rates of overall student wellness and flourishing, including greater confidence in career readiness

The College of the Liberal Arts is home to a world-class research portfolio that advances intellectual knowledge in the humanities and social sciences with meaningful impact across the Commonwealth and throughout the world. Internationally recognized research initiatives such as the Hemingway Letters Project, the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making, two transdisciplinary National Science Foundation Research Traineeship grants involving Liberal Arts faculty, and the Anthropological Research in Science Education (ARISE) program in Anthropology, for example, shape disciplinary and interdisciplinary debates, develop innovative methods, train future undergraduate and graduate scholars and engage broad public audiences. Through centers and institutes such as the Rock Ethics Institute, the Humanities Institute, the Richards Civil War Era Center, the Child Study Center, the Center for Black Digital Research, and The McCourtney Institute for Democracy; and undertakings like the Global Asias Initiative and the African Studies Global Virtual Forum, the College institutionalizes interdisciplinary collaboration. This work creates durable structures that support collaborative research, enrich teaching and learning, and connect rigorous scholarship to pressing social, cultural, and policy challenges.

Building on this strong foundation, the College will continue to recognize, promote, and amplify the breadth and excellence of its research enterprise while leveraging its distinctive strengths to foster novel, integrative, and interdisciplinary scholarship. By encouraging collaboration across academic units, and with colleges, and institutions—both nationally and internationally—the College will further its reputation as a leading liberal arts college within the Big Ten Academic Alliance. Strategic resource allocations, including faculty hiring, will support academic units with established national and international reputations while also strengthening units with clear potential for broader prominence.

Central to this mission is the recruitment and retention of leading scholars who advance the core intellectual traditions of the liberal arts and provide exceptional training and mentorship for graduate students pursuing competitive careers in academia and beyond. Equally important is ensuring that these scholars are supported by the resources, infrastructure, and vibrant intellectual community needed to pursue ambitious, high-impact research.

To make progress in fulfilling this strategic priority, we will:

• Reward scholarly excellence and develop mechanisms that nurture and sustain novel research throughout the College. Potential incentives may include improving financial support from the College for receiving external grants and fellowships (e.g., more indirect return) and exploring ways to fund more research assistantships to facilitate research.
• Leverage the College’s ecosystem of research centers and institutes to increase interdisciplinary research opportunities within the College’s and University’s research infrastructure. By fostering strong connections with other colleges and University-level research units (e.g., the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, the Institute of Energy and the Environment, the Social Science Research Institute, and the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences), the College will support innovative and integrative research—particularly in areas such as social inequality and social change, climate, and the societal impacts of technology—that advances community-engaged scholarship and produces meaningful impact in local communities, across the Commonwealth, and beyond.
• Strengthen communication and coordination to expand opportunities for cross-departmental, cross-program, and cross-college hiring including through co-hires with University-wide research institutes and college-initiated collaborations between academic units and internal centers and institutes.
• Encourage and develop opportunities to engage with diverse audiences through robust outreach programs and community-engaged research in order to enhance community engagement, which can increase the visibility of Liberal Arts scholarship and support from the larger community.
• Expand outreach efforts into communities throughout central Pennsylvania that can promote the relevance of Liberal Arts scholarship for the broader public. Existing events, like the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese’s involvement in the annual State College Latin Festival, and regular community outreach events organized by the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and the Latina/o Studies Program can provide a starting point for expanding current initiatives and developing new ones.
• Expand research training opportunities for all undergraduate and graduate students. Collaborate with the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and other Penn State offices to create robust training pipelines for undergraduate students, graduate students, and early postdoctoral scholars within, and potentially between, academic units.
• Expand and enhance funding for early-career, mid-career, and distinguished faculty professorships and fellowships.

Metrics for Success:

• Increase in the number of high-impact papers and books;
• Increase in the number of external grants and fellowships (recognizing that such efforts may be difficult in certain fields given the current state and federal funding landscape);
• Increase in the number of faculty in leadership roles in their respective professional organizations and editorships in flagship journals in their fields;
• Increase in the number of international co-authors and international awards and grants;
• Increase in the number of highly placed books and articles with multi-disciplinary teams;
• Increase in the number of prestigious fellowships, awards and other academic and professional honors;
• Increase in the dissemination of faculty research and expertise to the broader public;
• Increase in the number of collaborative community-based research projects across disciplines and units;
• Expansion of endowments and other enrichment funding to attract and retain research-active faculty and support their scholarly work;
• Growth in the number of undergraduate and graduate students involved in faculty-led research;
• Enhancement of competitive funding packages for graduate student recruits.

The success of the College of the Liberal Arts, whether it be in achieving our strategic priorities or in anything else, rests with the quality of our people. The College already possesses accomplished and dedicated faculty and staff whose teaching, research, service, and professional expertise sustain the College’s excellence.

Guided by the principles of excellence and inclusivity, the College is committed to recruiting, retaining, and recognizing faculty and staff who are deeply engaged with, and contribute greatly to, our vibrant academic community. We will enhance support for faculty and staff across all stages of their Penn State careers, and we will leverage and expand existing programs and communities, including faculty development initiatives offered by the Office of Faculty Affairs and Advancement; and professional development activities for staff offered by the College and University, as well as networking and community-building activities organized by the Liberal Arts Staff Advisory Council. The College will continue to explore additional opportunities for professional coaching, mentoring, networking, and recognition. These efforts will strengthen faculty and staff participation and engagement, foster continued growth and innovation, and ensure that all members of our community are positioned to do their best work and be the best versions of themselves.

To make progress in fulfilling this strategic priority, we will:

• Enhance opportunities for faculty professional development of faculty by maintaining the College’s signature faculty development programs (e.g., Faculty Writing Group, Future Funding Faculty Program, Mid-Career Faculty Advancement Program, Faculty Coaching), and by providing resources that enable faculty to pursue existing College, University, and discipline-based opportunities.
• Expand mentoring, recognition, and professional development opportunities for early- and mid-career faculty, including teaching and research-specific opportunities for teaching, research, and clinical faculty that play a significant role in their promotion process.
• Build new pathways for recognizing and rewarding teaching, research, and clinical faculty, and strengthen their career trajectories in the College and at the University.
• Identify and engage donor prospects who might help fund enhancements to teaching excellence, research excellence, and staff recognition.
• Increase staff professional development resources and prioritize mentoring, coaching, and professional development opportunities that enable staff to better succeed in their current positions, as well as prepare for advancement within their current units or elsewhere in the College or at the University.
• Enhance efforts to recognize and promote staff excellence at the unit, College, University, and/or professional level.
• Expand staff recruitment pathways through greater collaboration with University and community partners.
• Collaborate more closely with the Liberal Arts Staff Advisory Council to build community across units within the College.
• Support and promote the principles of shared governance and develop meaningful opportunities for shared, collective decision-making through such vehicles as the Liberal Arts Faculty Senate Caucus, Liberal Arts Staff Advisory Council, Teaching Faculty Advisory Committee, and Tenure-Line Advisory Committee.
• Continue addressing salary inequities, and redressing salary compression where possible.
• Strengthen overall support structures for attracting and retaining top-tier faculty and staff.
• Holistically integrate postdoctoral and visiting scholars into the College’s scholarly, intellectual, and professional communities. Partner with the Penn State Office of Postdoctoral Affairs to provide the unique support needed by research and teaching postdoctoral scholars in Liberal Arts (e.g., building interdisciplinary research networks; integrating research and teaching; navigating possible career outcomes).

Metrics for Success:

• Increased participation of faculty across classifications (i.e., tenure-line, teaching, research, and clinical faculty categories) in professional development, leadership training, and pedagogical and research innovation activities;
• Increased participation of staff in professional development initiatives and College activities and initiatives;
• Better outcomes tracking of signature College faculty development programs;
• Improvements in time to promotion for mid-career faculty, including women and members of historically underrepresented groups;  
• Improvements in, and greater clarity regarding, faculty and staff retention rates;
• Expansion of endowed and distinguished professorships, as well as research-directed funding in the College;
• Greater organizational integration among College staff teams, managerial succession planning, and staff leadership development;
• Greater numbers of College staff successfully recruited through professional networks external to Penn State;
• Expansion of awards and other forms of recognition for College faculty and staff.

Advancing inclusion and belonging is a foundational commitment that is already deeply integrated into the College’s work and that strengthens all of its strategic priorities.

The College already has embedded inclusion and belonging into core functions. This includes expanding academic advising services and offering student support through the Career Enrichment Network and the Liberal Arts Chaiken Center for Student Success; training and acclimatizing international students to campus through programs run by the English for Professional Purposes Intercultural Center (EPPIC); and by investing in faculty development initiatives such as the Faculty Writing Group and the Mid-Career Faculty Advancement Program. These efforts embody the College’s commitment to promoting student engagement, timely academic progression, career readiness, and equitable professional advancement for everyone, including first-generation and low-income students, women, and members of historically underrepresented racially groups.

The College will continue embedding inclusion and belonging into its policies, programs, and practices. We will further strengthen and scale initiatives such as the Career Enrichment Network and the Liberal Arts Chaiken Center for Student Success to support student success; we will continue to expand faculty development programs that address disparities in time to promotion, and we will continue to grow opportunities that bolster faculty and staff professional development and advancement. Through these and related efforts, the College will ensure that inclusion and belonging remain central to furthering excellence and opportunity for students, faculty, and staff across our entire community.

Inclusion is an institutional commitment to fostering a culture where all individuals can fully participate in the Penn State community. Inclusion requires proactive efforts to ensure that people of all backgrounds, identities, and perspectives feel valued and have equitable opportunities for engagement and success.

Belonging refers to a campus environment where every member of the community feels welcomed, valued, and supported in their academic, professional, and personal journey. Belonging is cultivated through intentional actions, policies, and practices that foster meaningful connections and promote a shared sense of purpose within the University.[i]

Acknowledging that inclusion and belonging are central to the mission and values of the College of the Liberal Arts, we will:

• Enhance activities that foster and promote an intellectual and professional environment of robust dialogue and debate, welcoming multiple and diverse perspectives.
• Support and promote University policies created to ensure academic freedom, faculty and staff rights and responsibilities, general standards of professional ethics, student code of conduct, and access to appropriate campus spaces for expressive activities.
• Ensure that all students, faculty, and staff are confident in their ability to report misconduct without worry that their concerns will be ignored or that they will be exposed to acts of retaliation.
• Expand access to valuable co-curricular activities like internships, education abroad, and faculty-led research experiences to students who may traditionally be left out of such opportunities due to the costs involved.
• Identify and eliminate obstacles that lead to differential outcomes in graduation and retention rates, career outcomes and financial burden upon graduation, among students.
• Develop an inclusive curriculum that embraces and celebrates difference, including diverse intellectual and cultural viewpoints, perspectives from historically underrepresented populations, and perspectives that represent the full range of neurodiversity.
• Support efforts to increase accessibility and affordability of course materials for all students. This includes efforts to encourage best pedagogical practices for integrating technology in the classroom and the creation of course materials that are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• Continue to enhance support for change-of-campus and transfer students.
• Recruit and successfully advance the diverse trajectories of faculty, staff, and students.

• Enhance equitable professional development and advancement opportunities for faculty and staff.
• Continue to work on ensuring that all faculty and staff are knowledgeable about College and University policies and guidelines regarding the University’s employee caring functions (e.g., medical leave, parental leave, and the Employee Assistance Program). 
• Strengthen mechanisms for shared governance in the College, building on the foundation provided by the Liberal Arts Faculty Senate Caucus.
• Commit to providing resources and supporting initiatives, offices, and centers that advance inclusion and belonging.

Metrics for Success:

• Higher rates of recruitment, retention, progression, and degree completion among diverse students, including neurodiverse students;
• Enhanced engagement in training and development to promote cultural competencies and inclusive practices in the College;
• Hiring, retention, and progression for faculty and staff with a broad spectrum of perspectives and experiences, including those from historically underrepresented groups;
• Greater recognition of the contributions of students, faculty, and staff from historically underrepresented and marginalized groups, including the selection of student and College marshals, College- and University-level professorships, honors, and awards.
• Higher indicators of belonging and job satisfaction among all Liberal Arts faculty and staff.

The College of the Liberal Arts is uniquely positioned to anchor Penn State’s efforts to educate students for democracy and prepare them to engage in civic leadership. Throughout the humanities and social sciences, students develop the skills central to democratic life—making and evaluating arguments, communicating across difference, and engaging opposing viewpoints with respect—making this work integral to the College’s research and teaching missions. At the same time, the growing influence of artificial intelligence and other technological changes, are reshaping democratic life dramatically and rapidly.

Preparing students to understand, evaluate, and responsibly engage in democracy is essential to sustain informed citizenship, nurture effective leadership, and secure the future of democratic governance. It is a commitment woven into the fabric of the College’s teaching and research. Through nationally recognized initiatives, such as The McCourtney Institute for Democracy (and its associated centers, the Center for American Political Responsiveness and the Center for Democratic Deliberation), the Rock Ethics Institute, and the World in Conversation program, the College conducts rigorous scholarship about real-world democratic challenges and provide students with opportunities to engage directly in dialogue, deliberation, and civic problem-solving.

Pedagogical initiatives in the College position Liberal Arts as a hub to prepare students not only for professional success, but also for thoughtful participation and leadership in democratic life. Programs such as Rhetoric and Civic Life, the Civic and Community Engagement Intercollege Minor, Stand Up Awards offered by the Rock Ethics Institute and the Public Humanities Program through the Humanities Institute exemplify the College’s leadership in this area. Together with student organizations like the Speech and Debate Team (run by the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences) and Penn State Votes, these initiatives connect academic rigor to civic engagement and ethical leadership both inside and beyond the classroom. Importantly, many of these programs and activities are open to all Penn State students, thereby extending the reach of these critical efforts.

To make progress in fulfilling this strategic priority, we will:

• Build on existing pedagogical practices that develop democratic skills among students, including argumentation, deliberation, evidence-based reasoning, ethical analysis, and respectful engagement with opposing viewpoints in both humanities and social science courses. This should occur through additional support to already existing resources like the Undergraduate Speaking Center, and drawing on the expertise of units such as The McCourtney Institute for Democracy and the Center for Democratic Deliberation.
• Increase access to experiential civic learning opportunities (such as internships, embedded courses, student organizations, and community-engaged learning) that enable students from all backgrounds to benefit from the mentoring, resources, and real-world experiences needed to practice democratic participation and leadership.
• Expand the reach of initiatives (such as the Keystone Certificate in the Humanities and the Public Humanities Program, both run by the Humanities Institute) that help contextualize contemporary problems, such as migration, political polarization and changes in information flow due to AI, to students both within the College of the Liberal Arts and elsewhere at Penn State.
• Strengthen instruction and research on the civic and democratic implications of AI and other emerging technologies by drawing on the expertise of the Rock Ethics Institute and the Center for Social Data Analytics. This will prepare students to for responsible democratic citizenship in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
• Establish the Liberal Arts Washington Center with a primary emphasis on advancing career readiness, democratic engagement, and research excellence. The Center will serve as a hub for experiential education, research, and civic engagement by anchoring programs such as the Semester in Washington, embedded courses, faculty fellowships, and democracy-focused events.
• Enhance financial support for research that connects scholarly inquiry to contemporary democratic challenges, strengthening faculty research on democracy, governance, and public discourse.
• Create incentives and recognition for faculty who integrate research and teaching on democracy and civic leadership, such as course development grants, support for embedded courses, teaching awards, and support for public-facing scholarship.

Metrics for Success:

• Increase in the number of undergraduate courses across the College—in both the humanities and social sciences—that include learning outcomes related to argumentation, deliberation, civic engagement, democratic leadership, and the democratic implications of emerging technologies;
• Increase in student participation rates in democracy- and leadership-focused programs, such as the Nevins Fellows Program, the Paterno Fellows Program, and the NextGen Leadership Academy;
• Increase in faculty participation in pedagogical development programs focused on inclusive teaching, deliberation, and engagement across difference;
• Increase in faculty research output related to democracy, public discourse, or civic life, measured through publications, external funding, and public-facing scholarship.
• Increase in student, faculty, and staff perceptions of a welcoming campus climate for dialogue.