ACADEMIC AFFAIRS

Welcome to Academic Affairs.  Remembering that body, heart, and mind work together, we may identify the students as the body (as in “student body”), the staff as the heart, and the faculty as the mind of the New England College community.  Indeed, while the college is an academic, scholarly community, it is also a community of human beings whose personal identities, friendships, and families matter. 

Academic Affairs consists of the faculty and the academic programs generally grouped within five collegia: 

• The Arts, Literature, and Theatre (ALT) Collegium, housing studio art, art history, English, creative writing, comparative literature, drama, and theatre history;
• The Knowledge, Growth, and Action (KGA) Collegium, housing criminal justice, education, kinesiology, psychology, and sociology;
• The Management and Communications (MC) Collegium, housing business, business administration, economics, communications, and journalism;
• The Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) Collegium, housing biology, chemistry, environmental science, and mathematics; and
• The Veritas: Truth & Philosophy (Veritas) Collegium, housing history, philosophy, political science, and writing.

The entire faculty is responsible for developing, maintaining, and staffing the New England College Core (General Education) curriculum.

But this is not the whole story.  Academic Affairs includes or is enhanced by the following organizations:

• The Raymond Danforth Library, including the Tutoring Program;
• Pathways, which includes the Mentoring Program, academic advising, and career counseling;
• Many academic clubs like the History Club and The Henniker Review.
• Project Pericles, College Convention and Campus Compact, which involve students in service learning and internships.

However, it’s not only how we’re organized but more importantly how we interact with each other and with our students that makes a difference at New England College.  NEC truly is a student-centered, teaching academy of higher education.  Whatever research our faculty colleagues pursue in their own disciplines, all of this research is implicitly and/or explicitly dedicated to the scholarship of teaching, and in all our teaching there is a strong commitment to experiential possibilities.  This scholarship is extended to our student colleagues in a collegiality grounded on a commitment to a close working relationship between the individual student and his or her professor (who serves as a mentor, an advisor, a professional colleague, and often as a friend). 

Throughout academic affairs, we seek intellectual and imaginative challenges and discussions in an open, collegial, and respectful environment.

Don Melander

Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs