Overview
As an English major, you get to engage with the critical reading and writing skills necessary to understand both text and media. You’ll study significant works from historical and contemporary authors and artists while practicing your own writing, both academic and creative prose.
English Education Concentration
As a student in this program, you will get to learn lesson design, teaching diverse readers, teaching writing, and appropriate selection of literature for various audiences.
Creative Writing Concentration
At Radford, Creative Writing students get the opportunity to express themselves, capture their memories and experiences, and advocate for a better society through closely studying the craft of creative writing.
Professional and Technical Writing Concentration:
This concentration is excellent preparation for a career in business, government, non-profits, and corporations as a writer, editor, or publishing specialist.
Why Study English?
As an English major, you learn the power of language and the skills that come with doing so, including critical thinking, creativity, and interpretations. Designed for you to get an integrated, comprehensive learning program, the English major teaches students the fundamental ways of organizing knowledge in the discipline of English Studies. Our skilled faculty members have expertise that extends across specialties including Playwriting, Film Studies, Health Humanities, Gaming and Game Design, Education, and Environmental Studies.
Careers and Internships
The English major provides you with the core knowledge and the skills essential to career choices in writing, publishing, editing, teaching, or work in business and industry that requires creative thinking and excellent communication skills. Many of our students finish the program and continue to graduate school.
Creative Writing Concentration: most often, students in the Creative Writing program find themselves pursuing careers in writing, public relations, and advertising.
English Education Concentration: the most common career paths for English majors with this concentration include teaching middle or high school. In addition to those roles, graduates typically take on teaching or directing the school newspaper, literary publications or journals, or yearbook.
Professional and Technical Writing Concentration: this concentration is excellent preparation for a career in business, government, non-profits, and corporations as a writer, editor, or publishing specialist. It is also excellent preparation for graduate study, law school, work in journalism, and teaching.
Admissions Requirements
There are no additional requirements beyond Radford University admission. Please note, however, that students seeking to pursue a specific concentration must fulfill all the requirements for the English major core and use their elective hours to complete the concentration.
Opportunities for English students at Radford
The department currently offers a variety of non-traditional courses focused in such areas as gaming, health, humanities, theatre, and film.
As a Creative Writing student, you’ll have the opportunity to participate in English Club, the Creative Writers Guild, and Radford’s own literary and arts magazine Exit 109.
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67 English majors at Radford
(in 2022-23)
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100% of students complete a Senior thesis
(with a faculty member)
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100% of English Education students admitted to the Teacher Education program earned certification
(over the past 18 years)
The right writing skills for your bright future
As an English major at Radford, you get to uplevel your writing skills through our writing-intensive course program requirement. These classes integrate instruction in writing and the use of writing as a powerful learning tool into the whole curriculum, following a sequenced and coordinated plan. You get to take four writing-intensive courses throughout the major: Introduction to English Studies (ENGL 300), Literary Criticism (ENGL 420), The Author in Context (ENGL 470), and Senior Seminar (ENGL 496).
