Traditional Liberal Arts Research Articles

Considering Liberal Learning and the Health Professions

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE There has been much discussion concerning the relationship between an education in liberal arts and an education in a health profession. Some take a traditional view that the classics are the core of a liberal arts education, and therefore are separate from and preparatory for the professions.1 Others take a more contemporary view, such as using the arts or the humanities as supplemental instruction in certain areas of professional studies.2-4 In each view, the focus is how training in the traditional liberal arts can inform and be included in a professional (entry-level) course of study. This is reasonable and is the traditional way of approaching a liberal education in the professions.5 In fact, even some of the most progressive thinkers in the area, such as Lee Shulman and colleagues at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, still speak of a liberal arts education and a professional education as separate domains. A recent Carnegie-sponsored research seminar6 sought to “give public expression and form to a critical component of professional and liberal arts education” and spoke of linking “the training of ... other professionals with the core aspects of the liberal arts.” However, I ask you to consider the possibility that separating a liberal education from an education in the professions has distinct disadvantages and is not necessary. Further, I contend that a professional education can also be a liberal education.

The Increasing Utility of Elementary School Physical Education: A Mixed Blessing and Unique Challenge

Recent attention to the childhood obesity and inactivity epidemics in the United States would seem to bode well for public school physical education. I argue that it is actually a mixed blessing. Its effect is mixed because it presents physical activity as an obligation or duty. This stands in stark contrast to movement in the broader liberal arts tradition—that is, as a joy that more adorns one’s life than adds further obligations. Most physical educators currently attempt to mix the two by providing health‐oriented exercise and activity programs that are, for lack of a better term, fun. I suggest that it is difficult, for both theoretical and practical reasons, to thusly serve 2 masters. I recommend that the joy‐focused, play‐oriented mission receive priority attention.

The role of grade sensitivity in explaining the gender imbalance in undergraduate economics

There is a gender imbalance in undergraduate economics departments with most departments educating a strong majority of young men. This imbalance has led many economists to ponder the question of why relatively few women choose to take courses and major in economics. Our hypothesis is that the gender imbalance in undergraduate economics, particularly at institutions with traditional liberal arts curriculums, is partly explained by women's greater sensitivity to grades, particularly lower grades. Students choose their majors based on both their interests and their abilities. The literature indicates that the grade a student receives in an introductory class relative to grades received in other departments is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not the student chooses to enroll in more courses in the discipline. However, our hypothesis is that men who take economics courses are less responsive to this signal than are women. As a result, men who do poorly in economics are more likely to continue in the major. Women who do poorly, in contrast, are more likely to abandon economics and pursue a different major. Our results, generated from 16 years of data from a liberal arts college where economics is one of the most popular majors, support this hypothesis. The overall economics GPA for female majors is significantly higher than that for males and male students dominate the bottom of the grade distribution. Finally, results from the estimation of a series of selection models of the decision to take more economics courses indicate that, holding other characteristics constant, women are more responsive to the relative grade received than are men.

Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics (review)

Reviewed by: Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics D. R. Koukal (bio) Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics. Edited by Carl Mitcham . 4 vols. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2005. Pp. cix+2,378. $425. The encyclopedist boldly claims that his or her work constitutes a comprehensive account of general knowledge (or general knowledge of a particular branch of inquiry)—the height of arrogance in light of our astoundingly complex world and humanity's inherent finitude. In the face of this complexity and despite this finitude, the encyclopedist makes fundamental editorial decisions as to which topics are to be included and which are to be excluded. On topics about which he or she is relatively ignorant, the responsible encyclopedist typically calls on experts to assist in making such distinctions, but even then we must trust his or her circumscribed judgment in selecting these assorted experts. And on what expertise does the encyclopedist draw when selecting experts outside of his or her area of knowledge? Readers must suppose that the encyclopedist's panel of coeditors and consultants is sufficiently competent to match potential article contributors to specific topic areas, and then suppose again that these contributors possess the literary skills to convey crucial nuances to lay readers. Given this state of affairs, one could be forgiven for proclaiming that nothing is more audacious than compiling an encyclopedia—except, perhaps, for the conceit that a single person can review an encyclopedia without the resources of the encyclopedist. The only intellectually honest way to mitigate these audacities is to declare at the outset one's limitations. Your reviewer is a philosopher trained in the phenomenological tradition, and whose undergraduate education was generalist. Our encyclopedist, the philosopher of technology Carl Mitcham, is ambitious. Not content to recount settled facts, dates, biographies, and relatively uncontroversial events and developments, editor-in-chief Mitcham and his collaborators have taken aim at a vast and moving target: the rapidly evolving and various corpora of scientific-technico advances presently shaping our world in myriad and complex ways. Mitcham admits at the outset that given the fluidity of these various endeavors [End Page 614] his work can only provide a "snapshot" of these emerging bodies of knowledge, but even as he defines this limit he declares his most ambitious goal: to explore the ethical implications of these scientific and technological developments in order to foster co-reflection and more collaboration among "these not always collaborative efforts" (p. xi). The result is the Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics (ESTE), running to more than 2,300 pages divided among four large, illustrated volumes. Given ESTE's focus, it should not surprise that its field of contributors is dominated by scholars from applied ethics, environmental studies, information technology, science and technology studies, and engineering. The human sciences are also well-represented, with articles from economists, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and researchers in communication studies, as well as from people working in public policy, human rights, and national security. Some of the more traditional liberal arts are also represented (religious studies, history, literature, and especially philosophy), and there are articles from professionals in design, architecture, medicine, business, and various technical specialities. Curiously, contributions from those working in the pure sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology are few and far between. Turning to what your reviewer is best able to assess, the ESTE includes articles on the relevant philosophical figures (Bacon, Descartes, Kant, Mill, Comte, Heidegger, Ellul, and Illich, to name a few) as well as pertinent philosophical concepts and analytic tools (alienation, altruism, autonomy, applied and professional ethics of various kinds, informed consent, consequentialism, deontology, determinism, freedom, and virtue ethics). This is but a small sampling of a long list of philosophically relevant entries that strikes me as wide-ranging and comprehensive and that render challenging material accessible to the educated lay reader. For example, Mark Blitz's article on Heidegger cleanly relates the main themes of this notoriously difficult philosopher's thought to the guiding topics of the encyclopedia, but in a way that still conveys the complexities that could be explored through a firsthand reading. Similarly, Thomas Powers does a fine job explicating the nuances of deontology (a complicated...

Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money (review)

Reviewed by: Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money John Bean Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money by James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. 304 pp. Cloth $27.95. ISBN 0-8139-2263-1 The theme of this book is clear from the first sentence: "This book examines how a new and growing culture of money both shapes and distorts higher education" (p. 1). Rather than a book on the economics of higher education in the vein of Slaughter and Leslie's Academic Capitalism (1997), James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield's book concerns the sociology of money—what are the effects of this institutional orientation toward money on academic society and society as a whole? The tone drifts between sensible outrage and the longing for a deep intellectual and humanistic ecology. The first chapter joins the argument those who have an orientation toward money have with those who are oriented toward liberal education as an end in itself. Engell and Dangerfield write, "The fastest-expanding and often strongest motivation in American higher education is now money" (p. 2). The goal of higher education is no longer to create, transmit, or apply knowledge; it is to gain wealth. The result is that fields that are prospering meet one or more of these criteria: "(1) The field promises more money in lifetime earnings to its graduates. . . . (2) the field studies money; or (3) it receives significant money from federal grants or private funding" (p. 5). The traditional liberal arts do not meet these criteria and, as a result, they are fairing poorly. Many in the academy have lost interest in "discussing values, promoting social justice, enhancing aesthetic appreciation, grasping historical causes, and simply learning more, or educating citizens to make intelligent choices in their self-government, forming personal judgment, and . . . becoming a better person" (p. 11). In place of these activities, colleges and universities have substituted the competition for economic gain. [End Page 240] In the second chapter, Engell and Dangerfield describe five interlocking goals for a university: economic, social, and civic instrumental good; the ethical deliberation over how knowledge should be used; and the pursuit of all knowledge and ideas as the final cause or "entelechy." The second part of Chapter 2 is a lament that a search for prestige and money has replaced these five goals and that the relative standing of an institution has replaced the need to be good or do good works. Chapter 3, "Learning for Dollars," describes how students are drawn to majors that involve competitiveness, productivity, utility, and a direct return on the investment of tuition dollars. Money becomes the "exclusive denominator," defining "prestige, excellence, competence, commitment to the public good" (p. 69). The authors fear this economic shortsightedness will produce only short-term rewards, the smugness that comes from wealth, and a loss of the ideal of scholarship and learning. Chapter 4, "Humanities and the Market-Model University," details the ways in which institutions seeking wealth and status have disinvested in the humanities. As a result, the humanities have poor vital signs and appear to be weakening in comparison to market-driven areas. Chapter 5, "The Destruction of Reading," shows the ways in which reading, considered the driving force behind education, has been devalued. The authors indicate that for them the best reading comes from the traditional canon in literature, philosophy, and history. It is not a new and diverse canon that is pushing the reading of traditional subjects aside, but deadlines, daily pressures, and instant electronic information. The shift in budgets from libraries to electronic media has not helped: "Time is sliced too thin for the mind to form itself" (p. 117). Chapter 6, "Means and Ends, Signs and Symbols," takes a side road through semiotics but arrives at the same place: Love of knowledge and moral virtue is replaced by preparatory training. The authors view higher learning as an elite and meritocratic activity. They desire blending the symbolic codes of the various disciplines, perhaps with an eye to not losing the humanities entirely. In Chapter 7, "Packaging Ethics," Engell and Dangerfield observe that general ethical considerations, once based on spiritual, moral, philosophical, and historical...

Saving higher education in the age of money

Since 1965 an increasing preoccupation with has resulted in the inversion of its role in higher education, from a practical means to an end that crowds out all others. No longer do students and parents choose the best education that money can buy. Instead, they are faced with choosing which college or university will buy them more money. This comes as no real surprise, as the cost of attending a four-year college has doubled since 1985. Yet the question persists: at what real cost are we sending our students to college? Renowned educator James Engell and coauthor Anthony Dangerfield explore the answer to this question in Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money. They argue that the counterbalancing attitudes that used to temper a focus on with other equally legitimate and more fundamental goals have steadily weakened, resulting in a new consensus that elevates and the marketing of oneself and one's institution to the foremost ambitions of the intellectual world. This new minimization of higher education to the category of an investment to be repaid has damaged all disciplines not directly associated with money, particularly the humanities. Students often now are told they face a choice: between the practical sciences, business, and economic success, or the traditional liberal arts and sciences and expected poverty. In their comprehensive analysis of admission practices, institutional rankings, salaries, hiring practices, scholarships, student attitudes, tuition costs, research programs, library budgets, and class barriers, Engell and Dangerfield expose the major changes that the Age of Money has wrought in higher education while also offering a practical method of understanding and prioritizing the various elements involved in choosing the right school. Focusing on liberal arts and sciences colleges, private research universities, and flagship public institutions, the authors provide an explicit and coherent model of what an academic institution should offer, while encouraging individual institutions to retain their unique identities. Written for a general audience as well as for professionals, Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money will appeal to teachers and administrators, parents of students and prospective students, students and faculty in schools of higher education, and anyone interested in intellectual life.

Why We Chose Rhetoric

This article examines the authors’ arduous struggle to develop a professional communication program that would not only meet their students’ professional and intellectual needs but also achieve an identity consistent with their goals as scholars and teachers of composition. Ultimately, the authors argue that a professional communication program that combines in its teaching the ethos of a liberal arts tradition along with the practical skills needed by writers in the workplace is both desirable and possible but that it must be flexible enough to allow for ongoing curricular and philosophical negotiations to meet changing contextual demands.

The Farmers' Schools of 1909: The Origins of Arkansas's Four Regional Universities

ARKANSAS'S UNIVERSITIES at Jonesboro, Magnolia, Monticello, and Russellville owe their existence to the Farmers' Educational and Cooperative Union. It struggled a century ago to have the legislature establish four schools in the state. These schools took many decades to flower into universities, an evolution that occurred in several stages and was by no means assured. But without the union's uncompromising demand from 1906 to 1909 for four schools, at least two of these institutions of higher education-Arkansas University, Arkansas Tech University, Southern Arkansas University, and the University of Arkansas at Monticello-would likely not exist today. Agricultural reform during the Progressive Era was part of a broader national impulse-the County Life Movement. It aimed generally to reverse the decline of rural America. Several approaches to spreading modern farming practices in a countryside still using traditional methods competed within the movement, including various models for education. In Arkansas, the views of the Farmers' Union triumphed with respect to the number, type, and management of schools. The union prevailed even against its allies-Arkansas educators, the General Education Board, and Gov. George W. Donaghey-who wanted fewer schools and different kinds of schools. When the Arkansas legislature in 1909 passed Act 100 to establish a State Agricultural School in each of four districts, the state joined the front ranks of progressive reform. Such schools at the secondary level had captured the imagination and won the support of many who worried about the widening economic and social gap between urban-industrial America and the agrarian countryside. It was made worse, they believed, by the drain of able, ambitious young people from farm to city. President Theodore Roosevelt declared in 1907: I am firmly convinced that most farmers' boys and girls should be educated through high schools and through the teaching of elementary agriculture in the rural common schools, so that when grown up they shall become farmers and farmers' wives. Education should be toward and not away from the farm. There must be an organized effort to restore or create the highest social condition in the country districts.1 Roosevelt favored legislation that Georgia congressmen introduced to provide federal funding for instruction and home economics in secondary schools.2 Roosevelt's assistant secretary of agriculture, WiIlet M. Hays, confidently predicted in 1908 that soon there would be some 300 to 400 finishing schools-practically one in each country congressional district.3 The Commission on Country Life that Roosevelt established declared in 1909 that redirected education was of paramount importance and advocated three approaches: 1) the study of agriculture in regular public school work; 2) specialized and 3) extension teaching conducted by colleges by means of the printed page, face-to-face talks and demonstrations.4 A movement for schools was already underway in many states. Largely through philanthropic efforts, some and industrial schools had been built in the nineteenth century. By 1900, three states-Alabama, Minnesota, and Nebraska-had established public schools; within a decade fourteen more states had done so. The earliest schools in the South aimed their practical at blacks, while the preferred educational path for whites remained a traditional liberal arts curriculum.5 Alabama, in addition to funding the Tuskegee Institute for African Americans, had, beginning in 1889, established white-only agricultural schools in each of its congressional districts, but these schools' curricula remained largely literary and did not emphasize training until 1908 or home economics until 1912. …

The Community College Baccalaureate: Emerging Trends and Policy Issues (review)

Reviewed by: The Community College Baccalaureate: Emerging Trends and Policy Issues Thomas W. Bailey (bio) Deborah L. Floyd, Michael L. Skolnik, and Kenneth P. Walker, (Eds.). The Community College Baccalaureate: Emerging Trends and Policy Issues. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2004. 228 pp. Paper: $29.95. ISBN: 1-57922-130-0. Over the last decade, many community colleges have begun to offer bachelors' degrees. A few stirrings in the 1980s were followed by acceleration in the late 1990s signaled by the founding of the Community College Baccalaureate Association in 1997. The trajectory of the movement in Canada is similar, with perhaps a slightly earlier start. This edited volume has several objectives. It describes the history of this controversial movement in the United States in a chapter by Kenneth Walker, the president and founder of the Community College Baccalaureate Association, and in Canada by Michael Skolnik and another chapter by Berta Vigil Laden. Deborah Floyd provides an overview of the movement and defines various models. Thomas Furlong, John McKee, and Jon and Nancy Remington describe the development and characteristics of the CCB at St. Petersburg College in Florida, Westmark College in Arkansas, and Great Basin College in Nevada. A chapter by Albert Lorenzo describes the university center model in which the university conducts classes on community college campuses but maintains control over the B.A. Barbara Townsend presents a skeptical view of the movement, although other chapters also raise questions. Each chapter ends with a useful list of policy and research questions. In their concluding chapter, Floyd and Skolnik suggest that there are two broad arguments for the CCB. The first is increased access to the B.A. for students with limited B.A. opportunities due to location, finances, or learning styles. This access is particularly important because students are increasingly interested in earning a B.A. since it is more and more important in the labor market. The CCB might also be less expensive for both the student and the taxpayer. Floyd's overview chapter puts particular emphasis on geographic access, arguing that place-bound students should not be blocked from obtaining a B.A. simply because life circumstances prevent them from moving to a location where they could attend a B.A.-granting institution. A second argument for the CCB is that community colleges will provide a different type of post-secondary instruction that combines a more hands-on education with academic study. In addition to this pedagogic issue, the authors also emphasize providing education in fields where traditional four-year colleges are unable or unwilling to provide adequate capacity; nursing and teacher education are prominent examples. The skeptical perspective, presented in Townsend's chapter, but appearing in other chapters as well, suggests that, once they start conferring B.A.'s, community colleges will begin to shift resources away from their traditional access mission, neglecting developmental education and transfer. Or as Skolnik asks, can the college maintain its traditional mission or will the B.A. "unleash forces that will reshape the college in the image of the university" (p. 66). Skeptics also question whether the CCB will be accepted by graduate schools or employers equivalent to a B.A. granted by a traditional baccalaureate college or university. This book does an excellent job of raising the issues and outlining the controversy, but what does it do to resolve the debate? The St. Petersburg case suggests that the college has found a partnership and division of labor between it and the University of Southern Florida that could preserve the distinction between the CCB and the B.A. But overall, evidence presented in the book does suggest that, once community colleges start granting B.A.'s they will begin to take on the characteristics of traditional colleges. Westmark College was founded in 1928 as a two-year college, began offering B.A.'s in 1997, and became the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith in 2002. Unfortunately, the chapter on Westmark does not discuss or comment on this transformation. Lorenzo points out that while community colleges argue for the right to grant "applied" B.A.'s, distinct from academic B.A.'s, many of the CCBs have indeed been in traditional liberal arts...

Cultural Property and Student identity in the Multicultural Classroom

Early in my stint as chair of English department at my current school, I initiated process of getting approval for a new general education literature course on Inklings, group of Anglo-Catholic British writers dominated by two towers of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Given popularity of these two writers with our overwhelmingly Christian student body, au courant nature of course given Peter Jackson's blockbuster film trilogy, and strong desire of one of our faculty to teach such a course, it seemed to me to be a worthwhile addition to range of courses undergraduates could take to fulfill literature requirements in general education curriculum. Messiah College, where I chair, is a relatively small (3000 students) college of the liberal and arts and sciences, which identifies itself as a Christian institution of higher education. Despite these particularities, school has participated in many of changes that have been affecting academe across country: a gradually diversifying student body; competition between traditional liberal arts and a more applied or practical curriculum; and systematic development of policy and procedure, fundraising, and administrative layering that has given colleges everywhere an increasingly corporate character. (1) Rationales for curriculum here, as elsewhere, strike one as a mixture of old-style idealism and business-like pragmatism. At Messiah, courses in literature have to comply with several parameters in order to be considered a part of general education curriculum, parameters that alternately seem to speak to practical pedagogical issues or offer somewhat generic blandishments about nature of educating a well-rounded individual: they cannot require prerequisites, they must expose students to work of writers, etc. At that time, one parameter also called for classes through which students could develop a greater understanding of their culture. In developing rationale for adding course, I found this last parameter vexing. Our institution has undergone some significant demographic change over past seven years, and, while our cultural diversity quite literally pales in comparison to most state colleges or elite private colleges in country, nearly eleven percent of our student body who come from non-white ethnic groups or from overseas represent a sea change from two or three per cent of a decade ago. In this respect, while still overwhelmingly white, we are more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity than vast majority of private colleges that claim a specifically Christian identity, and we are more diverse than most other private colleges of any type in our geographical location in Central Pennsylvania. Students of color have strengthened own voices, and, with some encouragement from administration, there have been new calls for celebration and affirmation of multicultural diversity. New policy and procedure documents and college-wide identity statements declare our commitment to antiracist and multicultural education, and a five-year plan states specific plans for establishing this identity. Moreover, Messiah College as a whole springs from a tradition rooted deeply in Dutch and German peace churches (Brethren in Christ, Mennonite, and so forth), churches with an emphasis on peace and social justice, and, incidentally, with a fairly strong residual sense of ethnic identity. The administration and faculty of college often defines college as at odds with, and has struggled to avoid being swallowed up by, what is seen as a dominant American religious, cultural, and political ethos associated with conservative white evangelicalism, what pundits euphemistically call Religious Right. Nevertheless, our student body is drawn primarily from precisely that form of conservative white Christianity. Finally, figuring out what their could really be referring to concerned me in that I am a scholar and teacher of multiethnic literature and co-chairperson of campus committee dedicated to promoting an antiracist and multicultural identity in classroom and in culture of college as a whole. …

Toward a Liberal Arts Managerial Economics Pedagogy

We describe our department’s new, liberal arts Managerial Economics curriculum for undergraduates. Higher education experts have lamented the separation between managementrelated and liberal arts education. Our optional Managerial Economics track begins to bridge this gap by creating a focused sequence of courses integrated within the curriculum for departmental majors. The program benefits from faculty research within recent literatures combining economics and management, Allegheny’s expertise in experiential learning, and the College’s liberal arts tradition. Students are prepared to understand a rapidly changing managerial environment, the ambiguous and integrative nature of managerial problems, and the challenges posed by ethical pressures and globalization.

Ideology and criminal justice: Suggestions for a pedagogical model

Without the explanatory power of general theoretical principles, criminal justice educators are limited to subjectively describing the structure and function of our systems of criminal justice rather than explaining why these systems behave the way they do. Because of this, criminal justice lacks integrity as a legitimate academic discipline that seeks to meet the objectives of a liberal arts education. This paper explores the establishment of ideology as a first principle of criminal justice, derived from political philosophy and sociological theory. We examine ways to build upon this principle as a means of teaching criminal justice within the guise of the liberal arts tradition by guiding students toward a deeper understanding of the nature of our criminal justice systems and their place in larger society.

The American University in Bulgaria and U.S. Agency for International Development Relationship

Upon recognizing a need for a center of western oriented university education, an initiative committee including representatives from the Republic of Bulgaria, the city of Blagoevgrad, and the University of Maine obtained support from philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Institute and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to start a university in Bulgaria in 1991. The hallmark of its existence was that its programs would be oriented toward teaching democratic values through the American liberal arts tradition. Instruction would be in English so it could draw on students throughout the region if they were proficient in English. The university has grown from a small enrollment of 208 students to over 700 students in several disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. As the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) has become a regional institution, the AUBG–USAID relationship has been crucial. Now it is beginning to offer an EMBA program and has developed an excellent reputation through its graduated students.

Too Few Women? - Or Too Many Men? The Gender Imbalance in Undergraduate Economics

There is a gender imbalance in undergraduate economics departments with most departments educating a strong majority of young men. This imbalance has led many economists to ponder the question of why relatively few women choose to take courses and major in economics. Our hypothesis is that the gender imbalance in undergraduate economics, particularly at institutions with traditional liberal arts curriculums, is as much the result of too many men choosing economics as it is too few women. Students choose their majors based on both their interests and their abilities. The literature indicates that the grade a student receives in an introductory class relative to grades received in other departments is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not the student chooses to enroll in more courses in the discipline. However, our hypothesis is that men who take economics courses are less responsive to this signal than are women. As a result, men who do poorly in economics are more likely to continue in the major. Women who do poorly, in contrast, are more likely to abandon economics and pursue a different major. Our results, generated from 16 years of data from a liberal arts college where economics is one of the most popular majors, support this hypothesis. The overall economics GPA for female majors is significantly higher than that for males. In addition, histograms show that male students dominate the bottom of the grade distribution. Finally, results from estimation of a series of selection models of the decision to take more economics courses indicate that, holding other characteristics constant, women are more responsive to the relative grade received in the second semester of economics than are men.

Bridging Community Service and Life’s Great Questions: Thoughts on Co-Teaching a Service-Learning Course

Goucher College, a small college on the edge of Baltimore, has long emphasized community service as a key part of its liberal arts tradition, and as is the case with many similar educational institutions, has experienced huge growth in the last seven or more years with regard to the development of service learning courses, paralleled only by a similar expansion of opportunities for student-organized social service activism. Yet one hears, anecdotally, from professors and students alike, that there is too little time in all this activity for personal and communal introspection. Why do service? What motivates us? How does it change us? What is our relationship to the persons/communities served? How is this service related to various understandings of justice itself? Why is this service necessary? What really brings about transformation, healing, hope?

Universities and the Promotion of Corporate Responsibility: Reinterpreting the Liberal Arts Tradition

The issue of corporate responsibility has long been discussed in relationship to universities, but generally only in an ad hoc fashion. While the role of universities in teaching business ethics is one theme that has received significant and rather constant attention, other issues tend to be raised only sporadically. Moreover, when issues of corporate responsibility are raised, it is often done on the presumption of some understanding of a liberal arts mandate of the university, a position that has come under much attack in recent years. The purpose of this article is to investigate more systematically the nature of the obligations that the university has to promote more responsible corporate behaviour. It does so on the basis of a reinterpretation of the liberal arts tradition from a critical theory perspective. This entails: (1) an initial conceptualization of the roles and functions of the university; (2) an examination of these functions at two formative periods of the liberal arts tradition, the medieval university and the rise of the modern university in Germany in the early 19th century; (3) an investigation of ruptures in the understanding and practices of the liberal arts tradition, resulting in large part from the rise of the bureaucratic state and the industrial capitalist economy; (4) a reinterpretation of the liberal arts tradition from a critical theory perspective; and (5) a systematic elaboration of the obligations of the university vis-a-vis corporations based upon the university's key functions of teaching, research, formation and professional development.

American High Schools and the Liberal Arts Tradition

American High Schools and the Liberal Arts Tradition

The Educational Debate Over Darwinism

The debate over teaching Darwin's theory in public schools has been a feature of American public life since at least the Scopes trial of 1925. Drawing on the liberal arts tradition centered in rhetoric and civic argument, this essay argues that science education should not merely prepare tomorrow's scientists, but also educate scientifically articulate citzens. It offers the Origin of Species as a model for educational strategies that would protect the integrity of science, while addressing the objections of students and their parents to Darwin's ideas. Darwin's work belongs in the great tradition of two-sided humanistic argument central to Western education since antiquity, and exemplified in John Milton and John Stuart Mitt. Debate between Darwin's theory and its alternatives, whether young earth creationism or Intelligent Design, is recommended as a means to teach Darwin's theory and train students in the central role of critique and argument in scientific reasoning.

The Radicalism of the Liberal Arts Tradition

The Radicalism of the Liberal Arts Tradition

Theory into Practice

This article outlines the pedogogical imperatives and practical necessities that shaped the establishment of the new Master of Arts degree in Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta (Canada). Established as a graduate programme open to students across the Faculty of Arts, the programme provides a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary studies that combine the rigours of a traditional Liberal Arts education with hands-on experience in emerging technologies. Although research in Humanities Computing is not necessarily a broadly interdisciplinary proposition, the establishment of a Humanities Computing curriculum is. Teaching in Humanities Computing must incorporate the work of many different disciplines (either separately or in concert). It can serve as a powerful vehicle for promoting the type of collaboration between departments and faculties that many colleagues and administrators seek.