Dean of Arts

Office of The Dean of Arts

Dean's Welcome

Welcome to the Office of the Dean of Arts! We support all academic departments and programs in the Faculty of Arts, and provide resources for faculty, students, and staff to support your academic and professional endeavours. 

We might understand Arts disciplines collectively as the moral compass of the university, because here we learn to understand the human condition through different perspectives and values. This often comes with uncertainty, not only with the kinds of questions and new perspectives you will face in the classroom, but also with your navigation of your Arts degree – what should I pick for my major? Will this choice lead me to a valuable career? While there is often a disconnect between the public valuing of Arts education and the real-life benefits that students receive through this education, I am here to tell you that the critical skills you will learn in fine arts, humanities, interdisciplinary, and social sciences disciplines will guide you towards seeing and understanding the world around you and your own human experience differently. Our graduates have gone on to careers in education, community work, law, government policy development, political careers at the highest levels, musical performance, the global non-profit sector, and much more.

Through a liberal arts education, we learn that in understanding our interconnected experiences in navigating complex problems we can also learn to solve them. The legacies and overlapping experiences of colonialism, climate crisis, gender-based violence, health inequity, and political and economic change can be better faced and understood together. More broadly, in the Arts, we seek to learn together how to better communicate on these challenges with those around us, to support emotional growth and empathic understanding around every problem faced, and to develop critical skills for interpreting everything from world events to the latest social media trend. 

StFX University was founded in 1853, and quickly became known for its principles of community-based, rural, adult, co-operative education in the 1920s. The founding ideologies of what became known as the “Antigonish Movement” still drive our educational mission today, geared towards meeting everyday public needs and service learning – whether economic, social, cultural, or political – with co-operative community-based solutions. This is a mission that is based on social action and community activism. It is a set of principles that defies notions that Arts education is now only for the elites – those who can afford with time and money to spend their days thinking artistically or philosophically or politically or historically. Instead, our mission here in the Faculty of Arts at StFX is to help students learn to be more empathetic, critically thinking, and community-minded people. Arts education is for everyone; we welcome you all with open arms for the time that you are here with us, and for your lifetime as alumni.

Dr. Erin Morton 

For more about Dean Morton, please see her Faculty bio!

Information for students

• If you are going to be absent from class for medical or personal reasons, please notify the Office of the Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs (@email)
• If you would like to take courses at another university for transfer back to your StFX degree, please fill in the Letter of Permission found in mesAMIS;
• If you would like an appointment for Academic Advising, please email @email and one of our Advising staff will be happy to help;

For other resources, please see Student Resources.