A Foundational Future is a
commitment to excellence
Foundational means recognizing the principles that guide our work and the fundamental activities that are crucial for our success. A Foundational Future strengthens our commitments to elevating research excellence, creating transformative educational opportunities for students, and serving as a force for good by providing leadership and developing solutions to societal grand challenges for Texas and the nation. A Foundational Future builds on the important work we do and creates a pathway for achieving excellence.
The Work We Do
The College of Arts and Sciences is the heart of intellectual activity at Texas A&M University, where diverse disciplines come together and collaborate. Our faculty and students help build resilience in coastal communities, explore shipwrecks to understand how watercraft have shaped the human experience, fight bacterial infections, build telescopes to explore star formations and black holes, explore the complexities of the human brain to develop treatments for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, expand our understanding of what it means to lead an ethical life, and examine how interactive digital technologies influence storytelling. The work we do in the College is vital for Texas, the United States, and the World.
Our College is poised to address the grand societal challenges we face today and will face in the future, challenges that cannot be addressed by a single discipline. They require collaboration across disciplinary boundaries where we leverage multiple perspectives, scientific, historical, economic, moral, psychological, and sociological, to gain a comprehensive understanding of our challenges and how we can best engage them. Our mix of disciplines—the humanities, mathematical and computational sciences, physical and natural sciences, and social sciences—each with their own distinct way of understanding the world, creates opportunities to work and educate across disciplines and generate innovative solutions to complex problems.
Our Work is Foundational
The Arts and Sciences have always been a cornerstone of Texas A&M University. Beginning with its founding in 1876, the university placed Arts and Sciences at the center of its curriculum emphasizing classical studies, languages, literature, and applied mathematics. The same is true today as the disciplines that comprise Arts and Sciences continue to form the heart of the university’s core curriculum. Our College provides a foundational education in the Arts and Sciences to students across the entire university, developing their critical thinking and reasoning as well as providing the general knowledge and skills for them to become productive citizens and members of society.
We conduct foundational research that pushes the boundaries of our knowledge and can be applied to real-life issues and challenges. Foundational research from our scholars and their labs has enriched our understanding of the world, driven the economic engine of our country, facilitated social innovation, and shaped decision-making and policymaking.
Our Work Produces Scholarship that has Impact
The greatest challenges and questions facing Texas, our nation, and the world require visionary and collaborative solutions. The College of Arts and Sciences is uniquely positioned to address these complex issues, thanks to the breadth and depth of research excellence across our diverse departments, centers, and institutes. Our faculty and students drive groundbreaking research in critical areas including the blue ocean economy, democracy, energy, health, human culture, space, and sustainability.
Advancing impactful knowledge requires imagination—to envision new possibilities beyond the limits of current understanding—and rigorous inquiry grounded in evidence and reasoned argument. While our disciplines employ varied approaches, they share a commitment to thoughtful analysis and the testing of ideas. We recognize that disagreement is a normal and valuable aspect of scholarly inquiry, best engaged through ongoing experimentation and critique to refine our thinking.
Our Work is Student Centered
Higher education offers students the opportunity to engage with the brightest minds at the forefront of their chosen disciplines, enriching their lives and deepening their sense of purpose. Our curriculum encourages intellectual curiosity and fosters the creation of new knowledge by promoting independent inquiry and critical thinking. We challenge students to pursue academic excellence while supporting them through high-quality advising, opportunities for high-impact learning—including faculty-led research projects and internships—and strong faculty-student mentoring.
Exploring new ideas and perspectives is essential for intellectual growth and enhances educational experience. We encourage our students to engage with a broad range of viewpoints and to arrive at independent conclusions using logic and facts. We strive to instill in our students a commitment to thorough analysis, systematic deliberation, and respectful debate—skills that will serve them as professionals and engaged citizens.
Our Work Serves the Public Good
We are dedicated to advancing the University's land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant missions by making significant contributions through our teaching, research, and service to Texas, the nation, and the world. We provide the knowledge and skills to empower our students for future success in their chosen careers. We prepare our students to become engaged citizens so they can contribute in meaningful ways to society. Our research provides the foundation for innovation and discovery. We actively engage the public and our external stakeholders to build collaborations that both address their needs and strengthen our teaching and research missions.
