Explore UAB

students and professor discuss art pieceTo ensure that each student leaves UAB with the tools they need to succeed in an expanding and increasingly complex world, the College is dedicated to helping them develop the following skills and competencies:

  • Ethical and Moral Reasoning
  • The Scientific Method
  • Communication
  • Cultural Competence
  • Confidence in the Face of Complexity

We strive to establish an immersive educational experience in which students can grow through a rigorous curriculum grounded in formal instruction in the liberal arts and sciences. We will provide interdisciplinary and extracurricular experiences to prepare them for the new global ecosystem.

To achieve these goals the College will focus on accelerating development in five strategic areas:

  • Globalization

    The process of globalization is accelerating at an incredible rate. The internet has driven a stunning rise in the international exchange of cultural resources, ideas, trade transactions, capital investment, and the dissemination of knowledge. Globalization is diminishing the importance of national and political boundaries while increasing the opportunity for international harmony—spurring the potential for increasing economic growth, reducing poverty, improving health and expanding the democratization of education through enhanced access.

    In the face of this expanding globalization, the College's goal is to increase its international profile and enhance its students' global perspective. To be successful global leaders, students will need to be self aware, culturally nimble, and confident, and have the ability to engage, challenge, and motivate others on a multi-cultural scale.

    We will strive to give our students:

    • enhanced global awareness
    • deep understanding of the use of technology (especially technical communication skills)
    • an appreciation for global literacy
    • the ability to listen
    • the cultural competence to understand one's own culture and appreciate the culture of others
    • a sense of ethics and global responsibility
    • the ability to reach beyond ethnocentrism
    • comfort in traveling to and operating within foreign destinations
  • Undergraduate Education

    As UAB's largest academic enterprise, the College touches every undergraduate student who enters the university. We are responsible for ensuring that all students develop expertise in a chosen discipline, while providing additional extracurricular opportunities for personal maturation and character development.

    The full development of the human mind can only be achieved by experiencing the broad intellectual opportunities offered through a liberal arts curriculum that provides perspective on the evolution of human civilization and the fundamental nature of the universe, appreciation of and respect for cultural differences, an understanding of the nature and workings of complex organizations, and an appreciation of the fundamental drivers of human behavior and endeavor.

    To succeed in a rapidly changing global-technological world, students will need to be:

    • equipped with skills that are rooted in traditional disciplines, while remaining nimble in interactions with diverse peoples and cultures
    • morally and ethically motivated
    • technically adept
    • culturally competent
    • open to and respectful of diversity
    • able to communicate effectively with others regardless of origins
    • able to work in teams
  • Research and Graduate Education

    Across the College, faculty and students partner in systematic inquiry and mutual criticism to constantly create new knowledge and provide new opportunities for innovation that transforms our world. Through interdisciplinary exchange at the intersection of diverse disciplines, disruptive insights emerge that change the way we think and provide new opportunities for exploration. Inquiry results in discovery and the development and testing of ideas and theories, leading to knowledge that can be applied to meet the challenges of our time, transform historic disciplines, and improve teaching and learning.

    Our goal is to advance scholarship and advance research by:

    • partnering with Schools across the university to develop large-scale interdisciplinary research programs
    • recruiting distinguished professors from around the globe to assist in the establishment of novel interdisciplinary research programs and to coordinating the development of interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs to engage the best young minds
    • creating and maintaining state-of-the-art facilities and infrastructure to enable the pursuit of knowledge unhindered by technical limitations
    • encouraging the development and submission of large-scale competitive interdisciplinary research proposals to federal agencies
    • providing competitive internal grants to motivate the pursuit of interdisciplinary collaborations among faculty from all of the College departments
  • Diversity

    Born in the crucible of social justice, UAB is already among the most diverse universities in the country. The College recognizes that respect for diversity and inclusion is not only a moral obligation, but is important for accelerating the process of discovery, learning, and the development of responsible global citizens. Broader inclusion of views brings intellectual diversity and the perspective needed for the full development of ideas, defines the nature of complex problems, and creates pathways to solutions.

    • We will continue to support an atmosphere of inclusion where all people are welcomed to the College regardless of cultural, intellectual, racial, ethnic, and gender differences, as well as differences in physical abilities, values, beliefs, backgrounds, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status.
    • We aspire to be a community where each individual experiences a sense of belonging, value, and respect, where each of us is encouraged to achieve our greatest potential through our contributions.
    • We aspire to be a community where each individual experiences a sense of belonging, value, and respect, where each of us is encouraged to achieve our greatest potential through our contributions.
    • We will establish and maintain a community of wise and trusted scholars, composed of faculty and students that are reflective of the global society who the College represents.
  • Entrepreneurship and Innovation

    Innovation can be incremental or disruptive. Incremental, step-by-step innovation can bring minor advances, but disruptive innovation can result in the solution to significant problems, meet significant needs, and even transform our world. The impact of innovation is not limited to the manufacturing of new products but can change the nature of organizations, how we treat disease, how we educate, and how we live.

    Educators and entrepreneurs are natural partners in innovation. To be effective, entrepreneurs require deep insight into the natural world coupled with an understanding of the social, behavioral, institutional, cultural, and technological forces that must be integrated to bring about positive change.

    Given the diversity of intellectual thought, the variety of scholars and disciplines represented, and the combination of faculty wisdom with student energy and ambition, the College of Arts and Sciences represents a cauldron for catalyzing change and inspiring modern entrepreneurs.

    Our goal is to create a culture of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. The result of effective entrepreneurship is not limited to the creation of new wealth, devices, businesses, and industries, but extends to changing the way we think, the creation of new art forms, the discovery of new approaches for human expression and communication—the list goes on, limited only by our imagination.

About University Hall

University and College leadership, along with community members and building architects and contractors, broke ground on a new arts and sciences academic building in the Fall of 2017.

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About the Science and Engineering Complex

The College of Arts and Sciences is scheduled to break ground by the Fall of 2021 for a new, state-of-the-art science and engineering building on 14th Street South.

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