Welcome from the Chair

Dear Current Students, Future Students, Alumni, Colleagues, Friends, and Fellow Citizens,

Welcome to the Department of English at Texas Tech!

Our department is a dynamic and diverse department composed of a variety of academic disciplines: literary studies, film and media studies, creative writing, technical communication, user experience, rhetorical studies, writing studies, linguistics, and more. What ties all these diverse disciplines together is our faculty's commitment to teaching literacy across a variety of modalities, genres, voices, and historical moments. Our award-winning faculty are committed to the development of students' textual power, or their abilities to critically read and consume texts and to produce their own texts that have real-world impacts—whether students are creating essays, poems, websites, videos, resumes and cover letters, professional reports, and so forth.

It seems like now, more than ever, that literacy is fundamental to both education and citizenship. How do we listen to and understand our fellow citizens—whether local, national, or global—and how can we respond ethically to their concerns and arguments? Students in our programs explore questions related to the meaningful reception and production of texts across media, genres, voices, perspectives, and localities.

Our department serves roughly 4,500 students each semester in our excellent First-Year Writing Program (ENGL 1301 and 1302), and we have roughly 300 undergraduate majors studying either English or Writing, Design, and Technical Communication.

We offer nationally recognized graduate programs, including an MA in English, an MA in Technical Communication, a PhD in English, a PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric, and most recently, a new MFA in Creative Writing (launched in 2025).

The department has been at the forefront of innovation in teaching and learning, developing our first online programs in the 1990s. Accessible education has been central to our mission: We have been recognized for the affordability of our online MA in English, about half of our graduate students are online, and about half of our undergraduate majors are online students.

I am proud to lead a department that has a strong commitment to serving students and to excellent research and creative activity, as well as a long legacy of being central to the teaching mission of Texas Tech. Texas Technological College was founded in 1923, and classes began in October 2025. The legislation that created Texas Tech focused on providing instruction in technology and textile industries, but the liberal arts were at the center of Texas Tech's educational practice from the beginning. The university's first president, Paul Whitfield Horn, understood the importance of liberal arts education, and even announced to the Board of Directors, "I think there can be no difference of opinion concerning the fact that English is, in general, the single most important subject taught in our schools and colleges." Indeed, the first graduate of Texas Tech (determined by a drawing) was Mary Dale Buckner, an English major, in May 1927.

I look forward leading the Department of English into Texas Tech's second century and to serving our students and faculty as we continue to be leaders in teaching, learning, research, and creative activity.

Sincerely,

Michael J. Faris
Professor and Chair, Department of English
michael.faris@ttu.edu