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Distinctives
The School of Humanities and Leadership is pleased to provide a wide range of travel and intensive learning opportunities to help you enrich your education.
Scholarships
The School of Humanities and Leadership (H&L) offers substantial, annual scholarships to qualified majors through endowments. We offer a diverse range of courses in composition, literature, professional and creative writing, film, and special topics.
Events, Contests, and Festivals
Our school hosts events such as the Writer's Symposium, Blind Date with a Book (hosted by our Sigma Tau Delta chapter), game tournaments (we have a specialization in Tabletop Game Design!), Shaketember and Shaketober, Film Festival, Haiku Contest, WayCon (a convention for gamers and nerd-culture aficionados), and the Write to Ignite virtual writing conference.
The Spanish Department of 51³Ô¹ÏÍøÊÓƵ's School of Humanities and Leadership hosts an annual Festival de Lengua y Cultura competition inviting students from regional West Texas and Eastern New Mexico high schools to promote and celebrate language, literature, culture, and tradition through a variety of artistic endeavors.
Capstone
Graduating seniors participate in a capstone course, which refines and refreshes the concepts of their degrees while guiding them toward employment or graduate studies.
Publications
H&L publishes an annual literary and arts magazine, Embers. Judges for Embers consider submissions from students, alumni, faculty, and staff in the areas of writing in English or Spanish, photography, visual art, or musical composition. Additionally, The Trailblazer online newspaper provides paid and intern positions for journalistic writing.
Presentations
Students have the opportunity to present literary or creative works at the annual convention for Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society. Our H&L Writer’s Symposium showcases student presentations of creative and academic writing in English and Spanish, with trophies and monetary prizes awarded to top participants.
Study Tours
Those who participate in a study tour - such as to the United Kingdom or through the southwest United States - can earn course credit while experiencing the beauty and culture of the land, led by knowledgeable and caring faculty mentors. The tour journeys through the real-life settings of literary and creative works covered in class, making the subject matter come to life.
The school also offers students an exciting chance to expand their appreciation for the study of the Spanish language by blending cultural immersion with intensive, conversational language learning in a three-week study tour to Costa Rica during the May-micro term. Participants can earn up to six credit hours during the tour.
Honors Societies
Eligible students are invited to join the local chapter of Alpha Mu Gamma, the largest national foreign language honor society in the United States, or 51³Ô¹ÏÍøÊÓƵ’s Eta Theta chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society.
Diverse Languages
51³Ô¹ÏÍøÊÓƵ proudly offers students a chance to improve their awareness of the world's communities and cultures, as well as their career-earning potential by studying one or more of five foreign languages: American Sign Language, Chinese, German, Latin, or Spanish.
Our language minors include Spanish, ASL, Chinese, Latin, German, and Comparative Languages.
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