The meeting began with President Weiss congratulating those administrators who were recently hired or promoted, including:

  • John McKnight, promoted to Associate Dean of Students and Director of Intercultural Development
  • Erica D’Agostino, promoted to Associate Dean of the College
  • Donna Howard, Director Academic Tutoring and Training Information Center
  • Ian Law, Assistant Baseball Coach
  • Ann Plappert, Payroll Coordinator

President Weiss then commented that the overall state of the College is strong, highlighting some of the exciting new developments that are in the works with the physical campus as well as programmatically such as:

  • The creation of a Center for Global Studies which will complement our study abroad programs and our other academic programming to specifically emphasize multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to global issues.  The Center will eventually also manifest as a new building on campus thanks to the shared vision of an incredibly generous donor.  Planning for the Center is underway.
  • The improvements to Pardee Drive and Watson Hall courtyard which will happen this summer and Quad drive which will happen in the summer of 2012, both of which implement strategies put forth in the 2009 Facilities Master Plan to improve open space connectivity, enhance the network of paths and walkways, and ensure pedestrian safety.
  • The planning and design work for the Arts Campus on North 3rd Street for the College’s new Theater/Film and Media Studies program which was announced in the Fall is progressing.

THE LIBERAL ARTS UNDER SIEGE – The Value of the Liberal Arts in the 21st Century

Hannah Stewart-Gambino, Dean of the College, was then ask to lead us in a discussion of the liberal arts – what they are, whether they are still relevant and why.  Hannah’s lively presentation began by highlighting the origins of the liberal arts as far back as classical antiquity.  Originally “liberal arts” was the type of education that was appropriate for a free person hence the use of the Latin term “liber” which means “free.”    In the later classical and medieval periods, the concept developed with a specificity of the liberal arts on grammar, logic, rhetoric (the “Trivium”) and then arithmetic, astronomy, music, geometry (the “Quadrivium”).  Over the ages, the liberal arts have expanded to include history, art, literature, mathematics, social sciences, physics, chemistry and biology.

At Lafayette, the liberal arts department include:

  • HUMANITIES – Art, English, Foreign Languages and Literature, Music, Philosophy, and Religious Studies
  • SOCIAL SCIENCES -Anthropology and Sociology, Economics, Government and Law, and History
  • NATURAL SCIENCES -Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geology and Environmental Geosciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Psychology

Included within these departments are over 45 areas of study – majors, minors and programs – such as American Studies, International Affairs, Women’s and Gender Studies, Neuroscience, and others that would also be considered components of a liberal arts education.  Hannah spoke about the fact that we often refer to Lafayette as being a school that offers both liberal arts and engineering, but we need not think of engineering as being separate from the liberal arts.  We should think of it as a liberal art.

In essence, being educated means being able to master advanced content AND become someone who can identify important questions and ideally develop or at least recognize appropriate methodologies for answering those important questions.  A liberal arts college requires a breadth of inquiry in order to develop the flexibility of mind necessary to be able to recognize solid analysis outside of one’s own major.  It is the basis for creating life-long learners.

Yet, if you listen to some media outlets or look at book titles, you would think that the liberal arts are at best irrelevant and at worst nearly defunct.  Yet this hysteria about the value (or lack thereof) of a liberal arts education is not new – it has been threatened for decades if not more.  One of the fears that are preyed upon is that a liberals arts education is not practical.  The reality is that there is a whole industry that highlights the fact that liberal arts graduates find great jobs at great companies.  There is also the impression that those associated with the liberal arts are elitist snobs.  Also not (necessarily) true.   More recently, there are some authors that are misinterpreting the term “liberal” in the liberal arts to have a political implication.  It does not.

Finally, the panic about liberal arts educations includes its costs.  Harper’s Magazine noted that last month was the first time in U.S. history that total levels of student debt has surpassed total credit card debt.  It costs a LOT to go to college; the “sticker price” of a private institution can be particularly frightening.  But Hannah points out that the majority of student debt is not a result of private institutions since they can be far more generous with financial aid.  That distinction, though, is sometimes lost on the public, who when they hear of mounting student debt, figure it must be the worst at the most expensive places.  In reality, the national picture on student debt is complex especially with recent scandals arising out of the for-profit higher education market where often vulnerable students are encouraged to take out debt in excess of what they could reasonably pay back, even if they got the job for which they are training.

In summary, although there are books and other media forms that state there is no value in a liberal arts education, few have any credibility.  And there are others, based on more serious research that tout the benefit if the liberal arts, and the humanities in particular, both in terms of individual success as well as for society and democracy.  Martha Nussbaum, captures succinctly the value of the liberal arts:

My views about the relationship between liberal education and democracy have not changed at all. I still believe that a healthy democracy needs an education that focuses on (1) Socratic self-examination and critical thinking; (2) the capacity to think as a citizen of the whole world, not just some local region or group, in a way informed by adequate historical, economic, and religious knowledge; and (3) trained imaginative capacities, so that people can put themselves in the position of others whose ways of life are very different from their own.

After Hannah’s great overview, she set us to work to prove her point.  We worked in small groups, on an exercise similar to those given first year students at Lafayette, trying to imagine how the various areas of study within the liberals arts (including engineering) individually contribute to the solution to a important, intractable issue such as global infant mortality.  Each table then shared how the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering all would be vital in successfully addressing global infant mortality.  We each also discussed how each of our areas of responsibility on Lafayette’s campus facilitated the delivery of this liberal arts education.

The session was intended to give administrators some insight into the academic areas of focus on campus, to fill them with pride given the value of what Lafayette does for our students and the world, and to help them each understand their own important contributions.