English

In the Department of English at Grove City College, you will study great literature, pursue life-changing wisdom, discover rich friendships, and greet a waiting world desperately seeking clear communicators, talented writers, and excellent teachers. With a Bachelor of Arts in English or English and Secondary Education, you will be equipped to pursue your professional calling with confidence in practically any field.

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Department Overview

Read and discover Truth.

At Grove City College we share your conviction that literature is a source of God’s Truth and a path to wisdom and virtue. In the works of masterful writers like Homer and Shakespeare, Milton and Hawthorne, Dante and Austen, you will discover a great conversation: a treasure trove of rich meditations on such perennial themes as the nature of God, the reality of goodness, sin, salvation, and human identity. Some of these great works will lead you to deep questions, down into the moral battlefield of the human heart. (“Out of the quarrel with ourselves,” W.B. Yeats reminds us, “we make poetry.”) But a great many other works have the potential to lead you out of yourself, to show you what the Renaissance writer Philip Sidney once called “speaking pictures” of the good life. As we delve into great works of literature, poetry, and drama together, you will see that these imaginative “pictures” have the power to “speak” to your soul — forming your affections as a disciple of Jesus Christ and empowering you to share Truth with others.

Connect with mentors and friends.

As a student of English, you will join a warm academic community that is committed to developing Christian minds in a literary context. Our small class sizes and mentorship teaching model make this program a fruitful and hospitable place to study, where you are sure to find faculty who care about your love of Truth, friends who share your love of words, and texts that guide you to a life of meaning. Best of all, you’ll discover that these conversations and relationships carry far beyond the classroom — into the English suite and dining halls and well past graduation. For students and professors alike, our department is a home for eager souls and a harbor opening out to a wide world of ideas and opportunities.

Find your professional calling.

Your experience as an English major will not be just intellectually rich and spiritually formative. As evidenced by our 96% post-graduate career outcomes rate, it will also be vocationally empowering and meaningful. In a culture where the power of language has been reduced to the ever-lauded 140-character tweet, the ability and desire to care for words is more and more rare. Here at Grove City, your love of words will be celebrated and strengthened, developing the very way in which you see the world, and ultimately forming a lens and skill set highly sought after in the job market — from publishing and teaching to health care and media. Many of your forerunners here have entered top-notch law and graduate programs at the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, the University of Chicago, Duke, Baylor, and University of Notre Dame. Others immediately thrive in the workforce, from UPMC and Net Health, to Tor Books and Scholastic Publishers, to the U.S. Department of State and Carnegie Mellon University.

Love language for life.

Your love of language is a beautiful gift — one given directly by the Creator — and we would be honored to walk with and guide you through your continued search for beauty and truth in literature, as well as your search for a rewarding career that fully employs your gifts. We hope you will join us in our pursuit of Christ through literary wisdom. As Augustine taught us, all truth belongs to Him, so wherever we find the scent of it — even, yes, in sonnets and plays, novels and essays — we find Him, the great Poet, the great Maker.

Department Fact Sheet

Peter Herman, '17

B.A. in English, Minor in Communication Studies, Minor in Classical Studies

Dan Rzewnicki, '16

B.A. in English, Minor in Biology, Minor in Psychology

Olivia Connors, '18

B.M. in Music Education, B.A. in English

Jordan Markley, '12

B.A. in English

Undergraduate Research Opportunities

The Department of English at Grove City College offers students meaningful opportunities to conduct literary research under the guidance of experienced faculty.

Undergraduate Research Opportunities