The School of Arts & Science supports the mission of Iona College through its commitment to fostering academic excellence and intellectual inquiry in the liberal arts tradition. Through its diverse programs and with the care and commitment of a community of teachers-scholars, the School offers courses of study that are academically challenging, and rooted in liberal arts education.

In furtherance of these commitments, the School strives to:

• provide an education that is current, student-centered, outcome-based, and involves an appropriate mix of classroom-based instruction, independent research, and internship or practical experience;
• equip students with the skills necessary for success in a rapidly changing environment: critical thinking, effective oral and written communication, problem solving, collaborative learning, ethical decision making, scientific, technological and aesthetic literacy;
• instill in students the habits of mind enabling them to possess our most precious human heritage: those ideas, beliefs, writings, and creative expressions that are the basis of intellectual, cultural, and moral development;
• deepen students' self-awareness, reflectiveness, and commitment to a core of values that will illuminate both their personal relationships and their relationship to a pluralistic society with the qualities of intelligence, tolerance, decency, compassion, and appreciation of cultures others than their own;
• recruit, retain, and support the development of a faculty of exceptional teacher-scholars whose pedagogy is informed by research, experience, and scholarship.

(Revised, December 2012)