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About the College

The College prepares students for lives of purpose, service, and leadership by delivering a world-class liberal arts and sciences education rooted in diverse perspectives and experiential learning.

Message from the Dean

I’m delighted to welcome you to the College of Arts and Sciences! The College is a distinctive home to more than 80 percent of all majors and minors at AU. While the College is the largest academic unit at AU, offering vast resources, it does not sacrifice the personalized mentorship and experiential learning found in a small liberal arts and sciences home. 

The College prepares students for lives of purpose, service, and leadership by delivering a world-class liberal arts and sciences education rooted in diverse perspectives and experiential learning. With innovative and inclusive curricula, cutting edge research, and applied training in the humanities, arts, social sciences and sciences, students graduate with a mastery of skills that helps them thrive and become analytical thinkers and global citizens.  

Nearly 400 full-time faculty teach students in state-of-the-art buildings, such as the Hall of Science and Katzen Arts Center. Ninety-seven percent of full-time faculty in the College hold the highest degree in their fields and work with innovative centers of scholarship, such as the Anti-Racist Research and Policy Center, The Immigration Lab, and the Center on Health, Risk and Society. Whether its ethics, artificial intelligence, space science, social justice, performing arts or biomedical training for medical school, our expert researchers conduct groundbreaking scholarship and complete award-winning publications alongside their students.

College faculty prioritize individualized mentoring and experiential learning. Here, the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences intersect to enhance a student’s educational path that leads them from a classroom to the real world. Students travel with faculty and work on research and in community. The College’s 19 academic departments, 34 graduate degree programs, and 60 undergraduate degree majors offer unparalleled internship possibilities, with NASA and the Smithsonian Institution, for example. There are an additional 70 minor and certificate programs for students who wish to dive into passions and experiences apart from a focal degree area. For example, the College is the first of its kind to offer certificates in Disability, Health, and Bodies and in Social Action, Justice, and the Performing Arts. There are also degree options to suit every student, such as both a BA and BS in Economics, Audio Technology, Health Studies and Computer Science; and both an online and in-person option for an MS in Data Science, or Economics, or Health Promotion.

College graduates proudly go out into the world as critical thinkers and problem solvers who get jobs, go to graduate school, and make contributions to their communities. They use that mastery of skills to become the inquisitive and empathetic changemakers of tomorrow.

Dean Linda Aldoory

CAS by the numbers: 4806 undergraduate students (majors and minors), 650 graduate students, 394 permanent full-time faculty and 585 adjuncts, average class size: 20 for undergrad, 11 for grad. 60 bachelor's degrees, 30 master's degrees, 6 doctoral degree
 

AU STEM Student Panel in DMTI.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The College of Arts and Sciences continues to work toward ensuring a seat at the table for faculty, staff and students from groups that have been historically excluded based on race and ethnicity, physical ability, gender expression, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background.
See more about DEI at the College

 
 

Discover Your Future with AU

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Discover Our Community:
Inclusion, Sustainability, Engagement

Discover Our Community: Sustainability

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See some of the ways AU and CAS students and faculty pursue sustainability.

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