Draft:Texas A&M University College of Liberal Arts

Texas A&M University College of Liberal Arts was the academic liberal arts college of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. The college offered courses in social and behavioral sciences, humanities, and the performing arts. The college became defunct in 2022, two years before what would have been it’s 100th year in existence. It was absorbed into the College of Arts and Sciences.

History
The college was founded in 1924 as the School of Arts and Science. The academic School of Arts and Sciences split in 1965, and the College of Liberal Arts was established that year, along with the College of Science.

In 2022, the College of Liberal Arts merged with the College of Geosciences and the College of Science, along with a few other programs, to form the College of Arts & Sciences. Some departments of the college formed the new School of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts.

In 2023, Inside Higher Ed reported that Jay Graham, a member of the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, claimed in a text that the reason the college was consolidated was "to control the liberal nature that those professors brought to campus.”

Academics
In 2007, The College of Liberal Arts had the largest collegiate faculty on campus with 306 faculty members and, with 6,883 students, and the second largest enrollment at Texas A&M, behind the Dwight Look College of Engineering. The college housed 12 departments and offered both discipline-specific and interdisciplinary degrees in 48 undergraduate programs and masters and doctor of philosophy degree programs.

Former departments and majors

 * Anthropology
 * Communication
 * Economics
 * English
 * European & Classical Languages & Cultures
 * Hispanic Studies
 * History
 * Performance Studies
 * Philosophy & Humanities
 * Political Science
 * Psychology
 * Sociology

Interdisciplinary majors

 * Africana Studies
 * American Studies
 * Arabic and Asian Language Office
 * Asian Studies
 * Digital Humanities
 * Film Studies
 * International Studies
 * Journalism Studies
 * Religious Studies
 * Women's & Gender Studies

Support
In 2007, the college had a $39 million budget, with an increased $5.5 million in competitively awarded extramural funding. More than $1.2 million of income was received from permanent endowments that totaled more than $24 million, benefiting 11 chairs, 23 professorships, and 9 faculty and graduate fellowships.

Faculty awards and honors
Starting in 1975, 56 faculty members have been recipients of the Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award. The college had presented 41 teaching awards, 14 research awards, and one administration award. In addition, the faculty had been awarded five Regents Professor Service Awards and two Texas A&M University Presidential Professors for Teaching Excellence, and included seven distinguished professors and 15 recipients of individual recognition. The college supported research about COVID-19 that was published by the National Library of Medicine.

List of deans

 * William David Maxwell (1968-1980)
 * Daniel Fallon (1984-1993)
 * Woodrow Jones Jr. (1994-2000)
 * Charles A. Johnson (2001-2009)
 * José Luis Bermúdez (2010-2014)
 * Pamela W. Matthews (2014-2021)
 * Steven M. Oberhelman (2021-2022)

Notable faculty

 * Joe Feagin, sociology professor
 * Charles Gordone (1987–1995), english and theater professor
 * Phil Gramm (1967–1978), senior professor of economics
 * Pekka Hämäläinen (2002–2004), associate professor of history
 * Arnold Krammer (1974–2015), history professor
 * J. Milton Nance (1941–1978), history professor, department chair
 * Robert Sherrill, english professor
 * Gary Varner, (1990–2022), philosophy professor