Religious Studies Major, BA

The College of Arts and Sciences is home to a wide array of academic disciplines and interdisciplinary programs. The departments, schools, and special programs housed within the college stretch across several broad divisions: the arts and humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. Although the faculty of the college have disciplinary interests that range across many diverse academic fields, the college faculty are united by a commitment to the goals and values of liberal education: unfettered intellectual inquiry, a dedication to the quest for knowledge as a worthwhile goal in and of itself, the development of a responsible and creative mind, and the cultivation of intellectual tolerance.

The liberally educated individual is characterized not so much by specific subject matter knowledge as by the habits of mind that are cultivated during a liberal education. A liberally educated person is thus one who is able to reason and communicate effectively, who values lifelong learning, and who can confront the uncertainties of human experience. A liberal education provides a strong foundation for research, scholarship, and teaching in a student’s chosen academic discipline. It also provides an invaluable educational background for a student who enters business, industry, the professions, or government or public service. A liberal education offers all individuals the opportunity to share in a rich intellectual heritage, to enjoy the adventures of the mind, and to live an engaged and fulfilling life.

The faculty of the college are committed to cultivating the habits of mind of liberal education in all of the students they teach: both those students who are pursuing concentrated study in a field within the college and those students who enroll in the academic courses offered by the college to complete University-wide general education requirements. General education serves as the underpinning of liberal education, both by providing students with opportunities to master basic learning skills and by acquainting students with the “ways of knowing” that characterize diverse academic disciplines. General education thus prepares students to become engaged lifelong learners.

Students who pursue focused studies in the College of Arts and Sciences will join a community of teacher-scholars dedicated to the generation, transmission, and preservation of knowledge in the many fields that constitute the college. The faculty of the college maintain robust agendas of research, scholarship, and creative activity in their chosen fields, and they encourage undergraduate students to join them as partners in research and creative activity. Through faculty-directed independent study and participation in faculty members’ research projects and creative activity, students hone their abilities to think critically and communicate effectively and learn how the frontiers of human knowledge are extended.

The great universities of the world are so labeled because their faculties have earned the reputation of being renowned scholars. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has earned such a reputation because of the quality of the research and creative activity of its faculty. To study with such a talented faculty is to experience the best education possible.