Hello, I'm Dr. Chris Dowd, chairman of the English department. And I just want to give you a brief overview of what our department here at the University of New Haven is doing and why you might want to consider studying English with us. We often get asked, "What is an English degree good for?" Most people, employers, want to hire people with strong critical reading and writing skills, which is exactly what our students focus on-- writing, thinking, reading, how to communicate complex ideas and understandable ways.
An English degree really signals to potential employers and graduate schools that you have experience using these kinds of skills. English is a very versatile degree. It allows students to pursue many different opportunities, unlike degrees that might be in a professional field of study where there's a direct line between your the title of your degree and the field you want to go into. An English degree really allows you to pursue many different things because it's used in almost every single profession.
This is noted a lot by the press. And so, you know, the New York Times in 2013 noticed that former English majors turn up almost anywhere in almost any career, and they nearly always bring with them a rich sense of the possibilities of language. This was in an article where the New York Times was talking about the desirability of graduates with English as an undergraduate degree.
Huffington Post same year said, "For my money literally and figuratively for my needs, and I suggest the needs of most small businesses, English majors are easily the top choice when it comes to getting the type of teammate who can make us all better as they say in basketball." Again, this is kind of referencing that versatility and those desirable skills that English majors tend to focus on.
And Business Insider said, "Companies like Google are starting to measure and seek out things like adaptability and social and emotional intelligence, particularly in managers, which will be to the benefit of humanities majors" and just a survey of people in leadership positions even in Fortune 500 Companies, you'll notice how many of them have humanities degrees, particularly English degrees. People with English tend to rise through the ranks into managerial positions.
According to the Heart 2015 Research Associates study on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the ability to effectively communicate in writing is one of the top outcomes employers are looking for. And employers are 81% more likely to hire someone with multiple classes requiring significant writing. And so when our graduates leave the University of New Haven, they are at an advantage to students who do not have an English degree when applying for jobs just because that skill set is so desirable.
Similarly, the College Board survey of business leaders noticed that writing was always identified as the threshold skill, that skill that tended to allow for promotion of salaried employees from kind of-- into management positions. And so you know, those are obviously super desirable skill sets. And they're exactly what we focus on here at the University of New Haven.
As I mentioned, our students tend to go into many different fields. We've had students go into law, to medical schools to MBA programs in business. We've had students go into politics. We've had them go into criminal justice. We've had biology. Across the board, some go into teaching, but I think that was the kind of the stereotype may be that my parents expected it in an English major would go only into teaching, but it's so much broader than that. The possibilities are wide open.
So a few brief things about the program here at UNH, we offer two concentrations in English, one in writing, and one in literature. There are also three minors here, a general English minor, a creative writing minor, and a professional writing minor. In terms of literature, our literature courses are a blend of kind of the traditional and the non-traditional. So for traditional, we offer American literature and Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and things like that. But we also have a lot of literature courses that focus on diversity. So we have immigrant literature, Irish literature, African American literature, and pop culture-- things like science fiction and the graphic novel are included in what we do.
In terms of writing, our courses tend to break down into either professional writing courses or creative writing courses. And so those professional writing courses would be things like business writing and technical writing, grant writing, digital editing, they often focus on those writing skills that are used in professional workplaces. Creative Writing tends to focus on fiction, poetry script writing, writing for children. There's often a blend of the two, you'll find that many businesses actually rely on the skills of Creative Writing quite a bit. So our students often take courses from both.
We've had several graduates and alumni go on to work in social media capacities, and that certainly is a business setting, but making quite a bit of use of what they learned in creative writing to do their jobs. The English major is 30 credits. So this breaks down what the credits look like. To graduate from the University of New Haven, you need 121 credits in general, the core curriculum -- those required courses of all students -- is 41 credits, and then the English major is 30. And that's a 15-credit English core and then 15 credits towards either that concentration in literature or writing.
That leaves all English majors with 50 remaining credits that they can use for electives, or many of our majors choose to pursue minors, sometimes one or two minors or even a double major is possible. That is the presentation and if you have more questions, I hope you'll talk to one of us in the English department and we look forward to speaking with you soon. Thank you.