English Department

Distinguished Teaching Professorship

Dr. George Hovis has been conferred with a Distinguished Teaching Professorship. This is SUNY's highest academic rank and recognizes outstanding teaching competence and mastery consistently demonstrated over many years at SUNY Oneonta. Dr. Hovis has been a member of the faculty in our English department since 2006, has served on numerous committees, advised student organizations and been a sponsor for the Student Grant Program for Research and Creative Activity for several years. In 2017 he was awarded the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Read more about Dr. Hovis and his accomplishments.

Department Overview

A medium-sized department, English has 10 full-time professors offering courses in composition, creative writing, literature, linguistics, and theory. We have nearly 200 majors in English and several hundred Education majors with an English concentration. Courses in creative writing are taught by practicing, prize-winning poets and fiction writers, and courses in literature by published critics and scholars; five department members have received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and a number of faculty have received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Large enough to provide a full range of courses in English, the department is also small enough to provide extensive individual attention to its students through advisement, conferences, collaborative student groups, seminars, and small classes. Class meetings range from once a week for two-and-a-half hours, to three times weekly for fifty minutes each, to individual conferences arranged to suit student schedules. Classes are offered both during the day and at night, both during the school year and summer.

Why Study English?

In addition to teaching, students with a major or minor can prepare for graduate school, the practice of law, business, publishing, administration, communications, and public service. The student who successfully majors in English acquires skills necessary for the scholarly, professional and business worlds, particularly the abilities to speak and write effectively; to conduct and report research; to organize and analyze data; and to pursue problems and communicate about them clearly, logically, and succinctly.

The communication skills and understanding of different international cultures that English majors develop prepare them to enter such fields as education, journalism, law, public service, medicine, business, and journalism. English majors bring to their work the flexibility, analytical skills, and confidence needed to be effective thinkers and problem-solvers.

As you can see from our alumni news page, SUNY Oneonta English majors have become teachers, academic administrators, lawyers, librarians, therapists, published authors, board game designers, health care marketers, and content designers.