As an English major at Mount Mercy College, you will develop the skills that employers most value -- the skills of writing, researching, speaking, and thinking. More specifically, you will strengthen your ability to:

  • Ask meaningful questions
  • Read actively and analytically
  • Write creatively and persuasively
  • Listen carefully
  • Adapt, generate, clarify, and compare ideas
  • Conduct, analyze, explain, and document research
  • Concentrate
  • Revise and edit
  • Organize ideas, materials, and people
  • Discuss and work with others
  • Argue persuasively
  • Understand yourself and others
  • Make ethical and effective decisions
  • Empathize with others
  • Appreciate complexity, ambiguity, and diversity
  • Solve problems
  • Imagine possibilities

This impressive repertoire of skills will not only make you more effective in the job market and the workplace, but it will also help you lead a balanced and meaningful life. English majors learn what it means to live well -- and they have fun -- as they study the stories, novels, poems, and plays of great writers past and present.

Creative writing is also an important part of the Mount Mercy English major. Over half of Mount Mercy’s English professors publish their own creative writing. And over half of our English majors edit or contribute to the department’s two annual student publications: The Paha Review and Perceptions. Each year the department also brings four writers to campus. In recent years, the department has proudly hosted award-winning writers such as Gary Soto, ZZ Packer, Heather McHugh, Barry Unsworth, Bharati Mukherjee, Marvin Bell, Charles Baxter, and Joy Harjo.

The English Department offers a flexible array of courses so that its majors have the opportunity to minor in other disciplines or even earn a second major. (Many Mount Mercy English majors “double major” in such fields as history, communication, speech/drama, philosophy, and criminal justice.) The English Department itself also offers an English/Business Interdisciplinary major, as well as minors in creative writing, writing, and English.

What classes should I take to enter the program?
What will it take to graduate?
Four-Year Plan for English
How will I gain experience?
What can I do with an English degree from Mount Mercy College?
Who can I talk to?