OCCC has reintroduced an associate’s degree in English after several years without one, a change driven largely by faculty advocacy and growing workforce demand for English teachers in Oklahoma.
The English pre-education/literature degree officially appeared in OCCC’s catalog for fall 2025, although students were able to declare the major as early as summer 2025 after the program completed its approval process.
“OCCC used to have an English degree” prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, OCCC Chair of English Jacob Nelson explained. “Then it was done away with and rolled into humanities. From my understanding, under previous administrations there were not a lot of graduates with it, so they decided to roll everything into one so we’d have better graduation numbers.”
That consolidation created a humanities degree with multiple tracks, but Nelson said the change did not work as intended. Under the new structure, English has been separated back out into its own degree alongside humanities and diversified studies.
The English pre-education/literature degree is designed with what Nelson describes as a “dual purpose.”
“It can transfer essentially for an education degree or an English education degree,” Nelson said. “But it also can transfer as a regular English degree or a literature degree as well.”
The program was originally scheduled to roll out in fall 2024, but paperwork issues delayed its launch.
“It was built and ready to go,” Nelson said. “But there was an issue with the paperwork, and because of that, it had to be redone and go through another approval cycle.”
After completing that process in spring 2025, the degree was approved and added to the catalog for fall 2025.
Nelson said the return of the English degree was not only about transfer options but also about meeting a need in Oklahoma’s workforce. The state has struggled to retain K-12 teachers.
“There is a demand and need for English teachers in the state of Oklahoma,” Nelson said. “We’re having a hard time hanging on to teachers. There’s a really high turnover.”
The degree also aligns with Oklahoma’s Inspired to Teach scholarship, which offers up to $25,000 to students who commit to teaching in the state after graduation.
“That scholarship applies to anybody who wants to become a teacher in Oklahoma,” Nelson said. “English pre-education falls within that.”
Nelson said he had wanted to bring back an English degree for years, even before becoming department chair.
“I really wanted to have an English degree,” he said. “If somebody wanted to go to a four-year (university) and have a literature degree or creative writing degree, we needed something that would be a nice equivalent for that.”
With support from Dr. Liz Largent, a former chair of English and interim dean who now serves as vice president for academic affairs, Nelson took on much of the work involved in rebuilding the program. He met with other colleges to establish two-plus-two transfer agreements and designed the course requirements himself.
“Dr. Largent said, ‘Just run with it. We need one,’” Nelson said. “So I built the course requirements for the degree going off of that.”
He said the process was extensive, but very rewarding.
“I believed in it,” Nelson said. “I wanted English to be more than just a handful of survey sections, one or two creative writing sections and then a bunch of composition.”
Having a dedicated degree, he said, allows the department to offer more literature, writing and humanities-focused courses – something he believes benefits both students and faculty.
Beyond workforce preparation, Nelson emphasized the role English education plays in addressing literacy concerns.
“Literacy is more than just being able to read,” he said. “It’s being able to understand subtext, history and why something is the way that it is.”
As an instructor, Nelson said the most rewarding part of teaching literature comes from discussion – especially when students begin to grasp difficult or challenging texts.
“There’s nothing more exciting than showing up to class thinking no one’s going to understand it,” he said, “and then having that conversation where it all starts to make sense.”
Nelson describes himself as “a huge literature nerd” who often gravitates toward darker, more complex works, such as “Blood Meridian” (by Cormac McCarthy), “Heart of Darkness” (by Joseph Conrad) and “Macbeth.”
“I like seeing a newer generation experience those texts for the first time,” he said. “You get to see where they’re coming from, where I’m coming from, and then have those conversations.”
Going forward, Nelson hopes to see the English pre-eduction/literature degree open new doors for students while allowing the department to grow in new directions.
