The undergraduate secondary English education teaching major is a comprehensive four-year program designed to prepare students to teach middle and high school English. After completing program requirements, students will be qualified to obtain a license to teach English in the state of Indiana in grades 5-12. This rigorous major, like all education majors at Purdue, prepares each future teacher with great depth of subject knowledge. Students complete coursework in educational psychology, curriculum development, and pedagogy in the College of Education and take coursework in literature, media, and language in the College of Liberal Arts. In addition, English Education students must maintain a 2.5 GPA or above so that they can complete a mandatory 10-week student teaching experience in a middle or high school..
Points of Pride
- An English Education major learns many skills that employers find desirable. The ability to communicate effectively and with grammatical accuracy, both in written and oral forms, is highly valued by employers, as are the strong editing and re-writing skills honed in required coursework. English Education majors are also known for having the ability to present a clear and logical argument, to analyze and interpret data, to document carefully, to think creatively, and to understand human motivation in diverse ways.
- The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers a vast library of resources ranging from style guides to instructional material to assist Purdue students. OWL also is an international resource with a website that receives nearly 85 million hits a year from more than 125 different countries. Advanced undergraduates can apply to be peer tutors in the Writing Lab.
- The Department of English co-sponsors the Books and Coffee series in which faculty, staff, and students meet on weekly in February to enjoy coffee and tea and listen to a professor talk about a recent book.
- The Department of English sponsors several student organizations to involve majors in a variety of activities, including the Student English Association, the Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society, and the Professional Writers Club.
- Undergraduates in English publish their own literary magazine, The Bell Tower, each year, and advanced undergraduates have the opportunity to volunteer for Sycamore Review, a journal edited and managed by the MFA Creative Writing program. Many undergraduates in English also volunteer for the staff of Purdue's student newspaper, The Exponent.
- The Department of English holds a Literary Awards competition and celebration every spring. Students can submit their best writing – creative work, essays, and nonfiction – to be considered for awards in a wide variety of categories, and a major author comes to campus to speak with students about writing and to give a reading of his or her own work.