The mission of the College of Arts & Letters is to study and teach the humanities, social sciences, and the arts. What makes us unique is that we approach the traditional humanities taking science and technology studies as our starting points. The underlying philosophy is that one can broach the study of history from the viewpoints of the history of science or the history of technology, philosophy from the philosophy of science, literature from the fields of literature and science or science fiction, sociology from the sociology of science, art and music through technology, and so on. Stevens has an STS program (variously Science, Technology and Society, or Science and Technology Studies), but the College of Arts & Letters is not a college devoted solely to STS. Rather, the defining idea behind this College is just the opposite. We believe that considerations of science and technology can and ought to be infused into the traditional disciplines of the humanities. No other school does anything like this, and, in fact, no existing academic label or rubric captures this distinctive institutional mission of integrating science and technology perspectives into the traditional humanities and social sciences.

The College of Arts & Letters, even though devoted to viewing the humanities through the lens of science and technology, does not reject traditional liberal arts educational curriculums or goals. Indeed, it is our conviction that one can get to the ‘eternal truths’ of the Greek genius or celebrate the great achievements of medieval or Renaissance art and literature, for example, no less from the intellectual vantage points of science and technology studies, than through the more traditional list of classic “Great Books.” These more traditional approaches are not timeless, but themselves historical products. The novel approach defining the College of Arts & Letters at Stevens would seem to be most fitting, not only for Stevens, but for the world we inhabit today. Hence our motto, "Tradition Informed by Today."