about the college
Welcome to CLASS!
The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences is a dynamic place, full of intellectual curiosity and creative energy, from both faculty and students. Encompassing creative and performing arts, humanities, and social sciences, the College truly is the intellectual and artistic heart of the university.
With disciplines ranging from Art to Theatre, Anthropology to Sociology, and African American Studies to Women’s Studies, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences is the largest and most diverse of the twelve colleges at the University of Houston.
CLASS’s fourteen departments and schools all offer undergraduate and master’s degrees, and seven offer doctoral degrees. The College also has seven programs offering undergraduate minors. Cultural centers, like the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts also make their home in CLASS. The College’s nearly 300 permanent faculty serve our 8000 undergraduate majors and minors and 1200 graduate students, preparing them for their careers and futures.
CLASS educates tomorrow's creative artists and performers, economists, historians, journalists, linguists, literary critics, political scientists, psychologists, and philosophers, and we provide all UH graduates with communication and research skills, cultural awareness, and the capacity for sound ethical and aesthetic judgments. The study of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences broadens students’ understanding of life and prepares them for meaningful roles in a multi-cultural society.
John Antel, Dean
a brief history of CLASS
The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences is a fairly new college in its current state, but it has a long tradition at the university. In the early days of the university, the components of CLASS were part of the College of Arts and Sciences. In the early 1970s, this college was divided into the College of Humanities, Fine Arts, and Communication (HFAC), the College of Social Sciences (SOS), and the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM). In 2000, SOS and HFAC were brought together to form CLASS. Since its creation, CLASS has thrived, becoming the largest and most diverse college in the university. Its departments and schools occupy buildings ranging from the oldest building on campus, Roy G. Cullen Hall, to among the newest, like the Moores School of Music building. CLASS faculty teach nearly 10,000 students every semester, at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Some current CLASS departments have been offering baccalaureate degrees since UH became a four-year institution in the 1930s. The first doctoral degrees were conferred in departments like History and Political Science in the mid 1970s. The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, the university’s art museum that is housed in CLASS, was dedicated in 1973. The newest addition to the college, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, was completed in late 2005.
