Residential College in the Arts and Humanities
Glenn Chambers, Interim DEAN
The Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH) is a residential college that mobilizes the arts and humanities through our wide range of programming to create collaborative, community engaged methods for addressing the complex societal problems facing our local and global communities and to reimagine and build a more just, equitable, and sustainable world.
RCAH students live and learn together in Snyder-Phillips Hall, a historic building on the MSU north campus. From this home base, students have the benefit of being part of a residential college while also having the diverse resources of one of the nation’s most distinguished public research universities available to them. RCAH fosters an expanded and inclusive residential college identity in which students live their learning in the arts and humanities in ways that engage principles of social justice and community engagement.
RCAH students graduate with the vital writing, communication, problem solving, critical thinking, and research abilities that are desirable and transferable across a range of workplace settings. The college is an excellent choice for students interested in community engagement, the creative arts, culture, languages, history, and literature. Graduates have pursued graduate study at some of the nation’s most prestigious universities and careers in the nonprofit sector, education, social work, business, and government.
RCAH students may choose to dual major in a traditional humanities or social science discipline or pursue a minor in one of the many programs available at the university, such as Museum Studies; Film Studies; Dance; Peace and Justice Studies; African and African American Studies; American Indian and Indigenous Studies; Asian Pacific American Studies; Chicano/Latino Studies; Muslim Studies; Jewish Studies; Women's and Gender Studies; and Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems. A high percentage of RCAH students are members of the Honors College, and individual and small group Honors options are offered frequently.
The college provides abundant opportunities for learning and hands-on training outside the classroom, in settings that include the RCAH Poetry Center, the LookOut! Art Gallery, the RCAH Theatre, and the Language and Media Center. Student-initiated groups include a theatre company, music ensembles, and a photography club, among many others. Students can often be found creating art at impromptu studio events, music at informal jam sessions, and poetry at the college’s popular slam programs. The RCAH student government takes an active part in discussions that shape the college’s living and learning environments.
The college faculty is drawn from a wide range of disciplines, including literature, art, theatre, philosophy, history, music, rhetoric and composition, anthropology, education, and the study of languages and culture. The faculty have a wide range of research interests and view engaged learning in the broadest sense – from workshop immersion experiences to community activism in local communities to study abroad – as a hallmark of good education for teachers as well as students.
RCAH is an educational space built on the ongoing transformative work of radically reciprocal teaching and learning. A residential college in the fullest sense, we build community among our students, faculty, staff, and the people around us, wherever we are living. We are grounded in—and push the boundaries of—the arts and humanities to create space for and deepen multiple ways of knowing that can be mobilized for equity and social justice. We strive to be accessible and accountable to communities as experts and coproducers of knowledge. Our transdisciplinary efforts address inequities that undermine the potential of a socially engaged and community-based university and a more just society.
Students admitted to Michigan State University are also admitted to the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities. Because enrollments in the college are limited, prospective first-year and transfer students should notify the Michigan State University Office of Admissions as early as possible of their desire to enroll in the college.
In addition to meeting the requirements of the university, students must meet the requirements specified below.