[Edna Gayles-Kee]  In the humanities department, we offer visual arts, we also offer theatre, dance, music, foreign language and philosophy.
 
[Michelle Michael-Lippens] Students come here not too certain what they want to study, what they want to be when they grow up.  We are a good launching pad for many of those students.  We prepare them through our university parallel program to find their way into the college experience.

[Edna Gayles-Kee]  Humanities department is like general studies, if you register for it or fill out the forms to be a part of it, most likely you will be accepted.  And we do have students that are taking remedial courses that are in humanities, but that is fine.  If they keep their average up, there is no problem and most of the students, once they get into the department, we have no problem . They work really hard, so, like I said we're very proud of our students.  There is no specific requirements as long as they can keep their grade point average up to 2.5, we are very happy about that.
   
[Michelle Michael-Lippens]  What I want you to do is take your partner and go somewhere in the room so that you are not next to anybody.  I want you to stand up and I want you to read ...

[Edna Gayles-Kee]  Some students want to have their concentration in theatre.  They can take introduction to theatre, Russian theatre.  If they want it in dance, tap dance, beginning tap and so forth, if they want it in music we have programs in music history, and that includes the history of Jazz, the history of popular music. 

[Michelle Michael-Lippens]  A student coming in and taking a music class, you might be working on a keyboard, you might be singing in a chorus, you might be playing drums in a jazz ensemble.  It is definitely a hands on experience.  

[Edna Gayles-Kee]  Class are taught by teachers that work in the community and that is the exciting part.  They do things within the community, we have art shows.

[Michelle Michael Lippens]  We have amazing faculty here.  We have people that have studied from the finest colleges and universities all around the world.  We have faculty who really work in their field, who are very active in their fields.  Accomplished, wonderful faculty who genuinely care about motivating their students to learn and helping them achieve.  
  
[Charles Roth]  Now you've got that dark and you have this area over here dark.  We just want to ask ourselves where is the light coming from?   

[Michelle Michael-Lippens]  We have a small student teacher ratio, hands on contact with the faculty.  Our biggest lecture classes are only 32 students.  The average in the arts, mine are 20, art has them at 14 or 15 depending on the studio.  They might be in a music class with 10.    

[Edna Gayles-Kee]  Here, because of the smaller classroom size and the one-to-one interaction with the teachers and the faculty, there is no reason that you can't get all the help that you need.

[music]   

[Michelle Michael-Lippens]  When a student leaves here and moves on to a four year institution or moves on directly into an employment situation with a job, they've learn to think outside the box a little bit by being in the humanities program and they are ready to deal with the outside world and all of its demands and challenges and they do so with a firm footing of the college experience at ECC underneath.