Liberal Arts Research Articles

Examining student and faculty attitudes in developing a social justice studies minor

Social justice in education is becoming a more prominent and necessary area of study in higher education. Facets of social justice align directly with values of liberal arts education, and students who are exposed to social justice pedagogy develop the knowledge and skills necessary to meet critical learning outcomes associated with the liberal arts. Given such demands to incorporate social justice pedagogy and practice into curriculum, the purpose of this study was to understand student and faculty attitudes and values regarding social justice education in order to guide the creation of this academic program at our college, as well as other institutions, particularly liberal arts colleges and/or predominately white institutions, that are interested in creating or enhancing their social justice education programs. Themes from focus groups with students and faculty revealed needs, desires, and concerns from the campus community regarding social justice education. Additionally, we created a social justice studies program for our institution using a strategic review of existing curriculum, resulting in a new academic minor built on existing courses that required no new faculty lines and little additional work on behalf of the faculty. Insights from this process are shared.

The impact of honors education on students’ academic and innovative achievements: a longitudinal study in China (2011–2021)

Honors education has ascended as an integral element within the sphere of global higher education, concentrating on fostering individuals who exhibit creativity and a history of innovative achievements. Despite its widespread adoption, there remains a scarcity of exhaustive longitudinal studies investigating its effects and associated variables. To address this shortcoming, this study deploys rigorous structural equation modeling (SEM) and linear regression analyses to meticulously examine a dataset comprising 319 students, who enrolled over a decade (2011–2021) in a prestigious honors college at a preeminent university in China. The primary objective is to discern the predictive efficacy of Chinese honors education selection criteria on students’ creative and academic accomplishments. This endeavor strives to clarify the complex interplay among students’ creative personalities, academic performance, creative achievements, and standardized college entrance exam scores. The findings emphasize that individuals who exhibit enhanced creative personality traits are predisposed to elevated levels of both innovation and academic attainment (β = 0.170, p = 0.017). Additionally, a significant inverse relationship is observed between general learning aptitude and subsequent academic performance (β = −0.008, p = 0.023), while students pursuing science disciplines demonstrate superior innovation outcomes compared to their liberal arts counterparts (β = 0.125, p = 0.048). Interestingly, neither gender nor general academic prowess exerts significant predictive power over collegiate innovation (β = −0.002, p = 0.134). These empirical insights equip policymakers and scholars with nuanced perspectives on the determinants shaping students’ refined educational experiences, thereby inciting critical discourse concerning the refinement of selection criteria and the imperative of nurturing students’ creative proclivities.

Study on the Construction of Teaching System and Transformation of Cultivation Path

Higher education has entered the stage of connotative development, and the mode of integration of industry and education has gradually become an important initiative to deepen education reform, improve the quality of talent training and promote the supply of industrial talents. This paper takes the teaching innovation of Residential Landscape Design as the base point, takes "social development" as the guidance, and puts forward the progressive teaching innovation of "one construction, two concerns, three explorations and four integrations" under the perspective of paying attention to the construction of the country and the development of the discipline. Concept. Under the background of the construction of new liberal arts, we intend to explore and reconstruct the curriculum system, teaching mode, teaching methods and teaching objectives; through the creation of the "exchange experience" teaching context, the teaching will be practically focused on the cultivation of problem awareness and students' discursive ability; and to construct the "theory-practice-skill-thinking-learning" teaching concept. The visualization teaching framework of "Theory-Practice-Skill-Thinking-Feedback" was constructed. At the same time, based on the trinity evaluation mode, the curriculum evaluation standards and evaluation system were further standardized, the multi-cognitive ability of students was comprehensively cultivated, and the innovative consciousness and practical ability of students were promoted to form a closed-loop teaching.

Top-Ranked Higher Education Institutions: An Investigation of the Sport Management Academic Discipline

The current exploratory study determined the prevalence of the sport management academic degree being offered in top-ranked institutions as based on U.S. News & World Report rankings. A focus on the differences of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees being offered, or not offered, was placed on national universities and liberal arts colleges because of the prevalence of these institution types and their educational settings. Additionally, the study aimed to determine if relevant indicators predicted a sport management degree being offered at a top-ranked national university and liberal arts college. Results indicated significant differences, with sport management degrees being offered at a higher frequency in national universities than liberal arts colleges. However, the sport management degree was largely not offered by the majority of top-ranked institutions. Notably, ranking, enrollment, and public/private institutional status did not predict sport management degree offerings at a liberal arts college. However, a national university had an increased likelihood of offering a sport management degree as enrollment increased and ranking increased (i.e., moved closer to 150). Altogether, the project highlighted that while the sport management academic discipline has certainly grown since its inception, growth has not really occurred at top-ranked higher education institutions, especially liberal arts colleges.

가톨릭대학교 종교교육과 학교사목에 대한 비평적 고찰

[Objective] The purpose of this study is to analyze the positive results and tasks that the Catholic University of Korea has achieved through curricular and extra-curricular areas and pastoral care.
 [Contents] First, in the curricular area, the Catholic University of Korea educates the value of a culture of human respect based on the Catholic spirit through four basic liberal arts courses and the ‘Catholic Metaversity’. But a new chaplain’s office is needed to oversee the holistic education and the proclamation of the Gospel. In the extra-curricular area, various opportunities for volunteer work are provided to help students respect Catholic humanism. But it is necessary to add programs related to Christian unity and interreligious dialogue. Lastly, in relation to pastoral care, the chaplain’s office not only helps the community mature in faith, but also strives to testify the teachings of Jesus Christ through life. There is a need for the community to be open to non-Catholic and foreign members.
 [Conclusions] First, helping students discover the value of human respect through the curricular area and putting that value into practice through the extra-curricular area and the pastoral care is the most ideal missionary method in a ‘secularized’ society. Second, it must be shown that academic exchange between science and theology is possible in a ‘highly industrial’ society. Lastly, the heritage of the Catholic faith can be further enriched through close exchange with neighboring religions in a ‘multi-religious’ society.

‘사회적 공감’ 교육 모형을 활용한 대학 글쓰기 수업 방안 연구

Objectives This study was applied to college writing classes using the social empathy education model. The purpose is to improve students' empathy ability. Accordingly, a teaching method for writing criticism and a class case are presented.
 Methods For 163 college students, three of the <Basic Writing> liberal arts classes conducted in the second semester of 2022 and the first semester of 2023 were presented. The theory of ‘social empathy’ argued by Elizabeth Segal was used as a research method. And the ‘social empathy’ educational model and teaching method for writing criticism were explained. We looked at the students' writings and looked at whether they recognized social problems in a social context dimension and sought solutions.
 Results To this end, writing criticism was conducted based on group activities. Students recognized the necessity and value of social empathy. And they showed personal empathy and social empathy ability to the subject of analysis. A solution was created by applying this to reality. Critical literacy improved and grew into a mature global citizen.
 Conclusions It proved that ‘social empathy’ education and critical writing classes are one of the alternatives that can solve indifference, discrimination, and disgust. In addition, it was confirmed that training critical thinking and reflection skills can develop empathy.

종교교양교육으로 보는 마음공부: 감정, 공감, 취사를 중심으로

[Objective] This study aims to explore the key elements of mind study, namely emotion, empathy, and mindful choice, through ‘Meditation and Character Cultivation’, a religious liberal arts education course at Wonkwang University.
 [Contents] The research analyzes the religious liberal arts education at Wonkwang University, which is based on the founding spirit of Won Buddhism. Focusing on the ‘Meditation and Character Training’ course, it investigates the emergence and recognition of emotions, the enhancement of empathy abilities, and the process of mindful choice. In this process, the study illuminates the interrelationship between emotions and sensory conditions, as well as the diversity and complexity of emotions, examining how these elements play a crucial role in mind study.
 [Conclusions] This study demonstrates how the religious liberal arts education of Won Buddhism can contribute to socially harmonious behavior choices by integrating emotion awareness and empathy capacity. Particularly, it provides concrete examples of how mind study can play a positive role in religious liberal arts education.

대학 교양으로서 일반생물학 수업에서 ‘기후 변화’ 교육

Climate change is an urgent and important problem that all humanity must solve. Therefore, it is indisputable that climate change education should be provided in universities, especially as part of liberal education. This study explored possible climate change education in biology. For this purpose, we analyzed the contents of the general biology curriculum in the general education curriculum and investigated and analyzed the topics of the general biology curriculum offered by public and private universities in the metropolitan area and local regions. As a result we came to the conclusion that general biology classes as a liberal arts subject must, in principle, include an ecology unit in the curriculum. However, most universities in Korea do not include this unit in their general biology curriculum. As a countermeasure, even if the entire ecology unit cannot be included in the curriculum for one or two semesters, the class can connect five to six topics related to climate change to other units. Otherwise, like some universities, there is a need to open a separate ecology course. Alternatively, other science courses that include climate change could be offered. In this case, though, guidance is needed for students to take the courses, and the need for climate change education for teachers in charge of course guidance remains an issue. In addition, various other liberal arts education subjects, including not only biology but also natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences, should also make such attempts to help solve the problem of climate change. Moreover, we propose adding content on climate change to the ‘Purpose of Liberal Education’ statement established by the Korea National Institute for General Education.

AI 시대, 영성에 기반한 불교 교양교육의 방향성 탐색

AI 시대, 영성에 기반한 불교 교양교육의 방향성 탐색

新文科背景下马克思主义新闻观课程思政教学创新研究

The proposal of the new liberal arts concept further clarifies the necessity and urgency of the innovation of ideological and political teaching of Marxist Journalism View Course. On the basis of analyzing the shortcomings of ideological and political teaching of Marxist Journalism View Course and the ideological characteristics of college students, this study puts forward innovative methods of ideological and political teaching of Marxist Journalism View Course. The innovation from teaching syllabus, teaching case, teaching mode, teaching evaluation and so on are both practical and extensive innovation path.

The missing study groups: Liminality and communitas in the time of COVID‐19

AbstractWe examine the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on teaching and learning in an Engineering School of a large US research university. We focus on the adjustment of instructors as they converted their courses to distance teaching and learning formats (e.g., virtual sessions, online forums) and on bachelor student experiences with those changes. While both instructors and students experienced liminality, the pandemic affected these groups differently. Instructors attempted to form communitas with their students by prioritizing their teaching responsibilities, increasing the accessibility of course materials, and being more available to students compared to pre‐pandemic times. However, students struggled to adapt to online learning contexts which lacked the sense of togetherness previously offered by in‐person classes, study‐groups, tutorial sessions, and communal study spaces. Unable to interact with their peers and create communitas, learning online proved to be an ineffective “solution.” Interacting with classmates and working in study groups are among the practices that can help students adjust to course delivery changes, even if it means those cultural practices go virtual. We argue that higher learning institutions, regardless of type (e.g., R1, R2, liberal arts, community colleges), should strengthen their remote teaching approaches. However, those strategies should incorporate: building strong relationships within and across roles, designing inclusive teaching and learning practices that take the contexts in which students learn into account, increasing spaces for peer‐to‐peer learning, and becoming proficient in the technologies needed to teach virtually.

Stop, Collaborate, and List ‘Em: Creating Local Metadata to Promote User Discovery of Minoritized Identities in a STEM Collection

Historical and modern scientific thought is dominated by the English language, colonized science, patriarchal norms, and Westernized “ways of knowing.” By making materials that lie outside that narrative discoverable (e.g., non-Western science, Indigenous/Aboriginal knowledge, women in science, etc.) we can assert that science is a global endeavor by representing diverse scientists on physical library shelves or ebook “shelves.” The Cataloging and Metadata Librarian and Science and Outreach Librarian at Furman University, a small liberal arts college, collaborated on a project to address discriminatory practices in the catalog records of a subset of the libraries’ STEM collection. Spurred by another project to update deprecated Cutters in Library of Congress call numbers, we assessed collection content with an eye to improve future collection development and created a local method for collocating DEI materials within an Alma consortium catalog. The intended goals of the project were to update the collection, improve metadata to increase discoverability, and develop an auditing process to use for other collections.

Engineering Judgment and Education: An Arendtian Account

This article discusses the meaning of judgment in engineering and engineering education, and it does so by introducing the work of political thinker Hannah Arendt. The argument presents Arendt’s non-cognitivist account of judgment as a counterpoint to prevailing conceptions of engineering judgment. Moreover, it suggests that Arendt’s unique perspective on what it means to be human in the context of modern technoscience is relevant to the discussion on the place of the humanities and liberal arts in engineering education.

Education, Equality, and Proto-Feminism in Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Abstract In this paper, I analyse the works of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, an Italian mathematician of the eighteenth century. I specifically focus on the themes of proto-feminism, equality, and educational rights as persistent threads of her philosophical and scientific production. I emphasize her continuous efforts to highlight the place of women in the history of philosophy, presenting three chief texts in which these efforts are expressed. In her first work, the Academic oration, in which it is demonstrated that the studies of the liberal arts by the female sex are by no means inappropriate, I show how she articulates a rhetoric defence of women's educational rights. In her second work, the Philosophical propositions, I highlight how she combines Cartesian metaphysics and philosophy of mind to justify women's belonging to the history of philosophy. In analysing her final masterpiece, the Analytical institutions, I interpret the dedication to the Austrian empress Maria Theresa as a proto-feminist text, vindicating the leading role of women in history and society.

(Re)Placing Personalis: A Study of Placement Reform and Self-Construction in Mission-Driven Contexts

Recent movements in higher education have opened many opportunities for writing program administrators to reform first-year writing placement procedures, including continued development and adaptation of Directed Self Placement (DSP) models alongside ongoing research into their potential to foster student agency and advance linguistic, racial, and social justice in the academy. Our study traces and compares the efforts of two writing program administrators to reform flawed placement processes at their two mission-driven liberal arts institutions—one, a small Lasallian university and Hispanic-serving Institution in Northern California; the other, a private research Jesuit university located in New York City. Using inter-institutional, grounded theory research, this study examines students' reflections on their placement choices to understand “substantive validity,” inquiring intentionally into ways that students self-locate with regard to their self-placement assessments and connecting to the mission-based language of personalis, what belongs to the person. Findings indicate that students use four rhetorical moves to personalize their placement: proliferating, riffing, importing, and qualifying. Specifically, the study calls into question current understandings of under-placement in DSP models, complicating DSP’s fundamentals of choice, guidance, and justice.

Innovation and Practice in the Cultivation of Business Management Talents in Political and Legal Institutions from the Perspective of New Liberal Arts

Innovation and Practice in the Cultivation of Business Management Talents in Political and Legal Institutions from the Perspective of New Liberal Arts

Development of Stylistics and Rhetoric in Lithuania

Every concept has its own history and its own prehistory, without which it is impossible to understand both complex and simple phenomena of life, and this article provides a brief overview of the development of rhetoric and stylistics from antiquity to the present day. It focuses on the formation and development of stylistics and rhetoric in Lithuania. Rhetoric, as one of the most important liberal arts, was still taught in Lithuania in the 16th and 18th centuries, together with dialectics and logic, the most famous works being: “Oratoriaus praktika, arba retorikos meno taisyklės” [The Practice of the Orator, or the Rules of the Art of Rhetoric] by Žygimantas Liauksminas, “Poetika” [ Poetics] by Motiejus Kazimieras Sarbievijus, “Apie taisytinas iškalbos ydas. Apie meną gerai mąstyti, būtiną gebėjimui gerai kalbėti” [On the Correctable Faults in Eloquence. On the Art of Good Thinking Necessary for Good Speaking] by Stanislovas Konarskis, “Apie iškalbą ir poeziją” [On eloquence and Poetry] by Pilypas Nerijus Golianskis and others. In Lithuania, works on stylistics in the national language appeared later, only at the end of the 1910s. The first Lithuanian work on stylistics was written in 1918 by Kazys Bizauskas under the title “Raštijos bei literatūros teorija” [Theory of Writing and Literature]. The second author, Motiejus Gustaitis, called his “Stilistika” [Stylistics] (1923) “a textbook for the theory of literature” in its subtitle. Juozas Ambrazevičius gave a similar title to his work “Literatūros teorija. Poetika” [Literary Theory. Poetics] (1930, second edition in 1936). During the Soviet period, quite a number of writers wrote on stylistic issues, including Kazimieras Župerka, Audronė Bitinienė and Juozas Abaravičius. The most extensive and comprehensive “Lietuvių kalbos stilistika” [Stylistics of the Lithuanian Language] by Juozas Pikčilingis was also prepared at that time. After the restoration of independence, rhetoric thrived. In 1999, Regina Koženiauskienė wrote her fundamental work on rhetoric “Retorika: Iškalbos stilistika” [Rhetoric: The Stylistics of Elocution]; “Juridinė lingvistika” [Legal Linguistics] was published in 2005; and, in 2013, “Rhetorical and Stylistic Analysis of Publication Texts” was released. Referring to the revival of rhetoric, it is necessary to mention Irena Buckley, Professor at Vytautas Magnus University. She is the author of the monographs “Retorikos tradicija XIX amžiaus lietuvių literatūroje” [The Rhetorical Tradition in 19th-Century Lithuanian Literature] (2006) and “L’Eden lituanien et la Babylone française: les contacts culturels franco-lituaniens au XIXe siècle” [Lithuanian Eden and French Babylon: Franco-Lithuanian Cultural Contacts in the 19th Century] (co-author with Marie-France de Palacio, 2012). The first monograph presents a clear conception of rhetoric, applying rhetorical analysis principles to 19th-century Lithuanian literature and updating the tradition of rhetorical culture in Lithuania. Teaching of rhetoric adheres to the classical canon rediscovered during the global revival of rhetoric. However, evident changes are occurring, as everything in the world undergoes reevaluation, from social relations and value systems to language. The established understanding within the rhetoric canon is being disrupted, and new rules and traditions are taking shape. These innovations are noted to initially emerge in the USA, then spread to Europe, eventually reaching Lithuania.

Civic Thought and Leadership: A Higher Civics to Sustain American Constitutional Democracy

Multiple civic crises facing American constitutional democracy—deepening political polarization and dysfunction, loss of confidence in major institutions and professions, and collapse of confidence in higher education—can be simultaneously redressed by restoring traditional civic education in universities and colleges. A nascent national reform in public universities, establishing departments of civic thought and leadership, reintroduces a blend of classical liberal arts and American civic education. This restores a core mission of truth-seeking and Socratic debate to universities, while providing the higher civics needed to perpetuate the American legal and constitutional order through non-partisan, non-ideological preparation of thoughtful citizens and leaders with the necessary civic knowledge and civic virtues, including commitment to the rule of law and American constitutionalism.

I Will Meet You There, and We Can Be Anxious Together: The Lived Experiences of College Students with Anxiety Disorders

<i>The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study was to understand the essence of the shared lived experiences of undergraduate college students with anxiety disorders at two universities in the Southeastern United States. Ellis’s cognitive theory, rational emotive behavior therapy, guided the study which took place at a mid-sized, public nonsectarian university and a small, private liberal arts college. The central research question elicited rich data regarding the shared lived experiences of the study participants. The four research sub-questions address participants’ perceptions regarding the impact of their disorders on their lifestyles and academic performance. A purposeful criterion sample was used to select the participants who completed a questionnaire, open-ended individual interviews, a single focus group interview, and participant journals. Phenomenological reduction was used to create a composite integration of meaning and the essence of the lived experience of the participants. Data results identified five themes: (a) social fears, (b) stressor issues, (c) generational issues, (d) academic performance barriers, and (e) institutional education and accommodation preferences.</i>

Artificial Intelligence in the CS2023 Undergraduate Computer Science Curriculum: Rationale and Challenges

Roughly every decade, the ACM and IEEE professional organizations have produced recommendations for the education of undergraduate computer science students. These guidelines are used worldwide by research universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. For the latest 2023 revision of the curriculum, AAAI has collaborated with ACM and IEEE to integrate artificial intelligence more broadly into this new curriculum and to address the issues it raises for students, instructors, practitioners, policy makers, and the general public. This paper describes the development process and rationale that underlie the artificial intelligence components of the CS2023 curriculum, discusses the challenges in curriculum design for such a rapidly advancing field, and examines lessons learned during this three-year process.