Archive for November 2010

Losing our humanit(ies), or why we need to save the liberal arts (Pt. 3)

(This post is the third in a three-part series of Why the Liberal Arts Are Important.)

Now that I’ve clarified my unending and passionate love for the liberal arts and humanities, I think it’s time to bring it all home, or, how to see an e-Portfolio as a practical application of a liberal arts education. Putting it frankly, there is a certain Sisyphean element to synthesizing four years’ of academic work. Particularly when that synthesis not only entails writing a Senior Seminar paper (ASC’s equivalent to an undergraduate thesis), but justifying one’s chosen field of study to concerned relatives over the holidays. This is where having an e-Portfolio can be invaluable.

When I began the Digital Design Fellowship in June, I was given a couple of preliminary duties. First, to figure out what e-Portfolios are; second, to show Agnes Scott students that creating one could be an excellent, tech-savvy way to reflect and grow intellectually — for the purposes of this series, a means to an end in terms of “making sense” of a college education. Five months after taking my position as Digital Design Fellow (extraordinaire), I’ve made some headway in understanding my aforementioned preliminary duties. Interestingly enough, writing my series on the liberal arts has helped me put the quest into better perspective. Besides, it’s given me a forum in which to air my grievances quite publicly.

Let’s begin with the basic question of what an e-Portfolio can do for you, and for the sake of argument, what you can do for your e-Portfolio. In my experience, it’s best not to dwell on the literal implications of the word “e-Portfolio”; if you’re a helplessly visual thinker like me, you’ll get bogged down with images of clip art briefcases stuffed with last semester’s final papers. Think of the e-Portfolio not only as a digital repository for the papers and projects you’re most proud of (ones you wouldn’t mind being Googled), but a process log of your intellectual life. If you’re making your e-Portfolio on a platform like WordPress, it’s simple enough to create “pages” in which you can upload documents like resumes and projects, so that takes care of the “portfolio” part. Using this site as an example, what can make an e-Portfolio stand out in a sea of clip art briefcases is a blog component — what I meant when I mentioned that intellectual process log. Writing about your experiences is worth the effort in three ways: it keeps your thoughts organized, forces you to assess the quality of your writing, and perhaps most importantly, enables you to see how you (and your writing) have changed over time.

At the simplest level, attending a liberal arts college means you’ll take many courses in a variety of fields with the general expectation that, by graduation, you will have become an academically well-rounded member of society. Consider a scenario in which you are a rising senior who has kept an active e-Portfolio since your first year: you’ve chronicled the steps following your major declaration, and are entering the final assessment phase of your college career. Those posts over the course of three years are a visual representation of your growth and education, or an actualized synthesis of a liberal arts education. What swankier way to defend your major to a nay-saying relative than an invitation to your website? 21st century, y’all.

So here’s where I’ll finally exhale and let you marinate on the possibilities for your e-Portfolio. After last week’s posts got over 100 pageviews, I know you’re out there! Comment away, lurkers! Tell me I’m wrong, tell me I’m right, give me the link to your blog.

Above all, have a great Thanksgiving holiday!

Losing our humanit(ies), or why we need to save the liberal arts (Pt. 2)

(This post is the second in a three-part series of Why the Liberal Arts Are Important.)

In my post-graduate year, I’ve given a lot of thought towards the importance of my degree and what it means for me career-wise, whether I choose graduate school or a dive into the (admittedly shallow) pool of available employment. I’m not going to beat the dead horse and regurgitate the many articles written about the dismal job market facing recent college graduates. The apparent impetus behind SUNY-Albany’s decision to cut its humanities departments is this: that college students should solely focus on majors that will give them jobs. I’m not saying students shouldn’t be forward-thinking in terms of what is financially beneficial, because that should fall under general personal responsibility. Let’s be honest with ourselves: the student who takes on internships and actively networks in his or her chosen field, whether Theatre or Business, is more likely to land a job than the one who expects to coast on a diploma. Back to the point: given the reasons for continuing education, SUNY-Albany’s decision seems flawed. If the only reason for going to college is to get a job, why choose college over vocational training? A friend of mine recently raised an interesting point: “I hate the way society pressures everyone to go to university and denigrates trade schools.” I think my friend made a terribly insightful comment about how American society has placed certain values on education, and I’d go so far as to say those values interfere with the importance of collective (and individual) intellect.

I’m probably preaching to the choir, but I don’t believe a person who has attended trade school to learn auto mechanics, plumbing, or masonry (again, examples!) should be treated as any less of a valuable scholar than the liberal arts graduate. So why all the hate? As if a mechanic is a second-class citizen compared to an Business major. Quite frankly, I want the person who has maintained the plane I’m flying in to have the most training possible in that field, so I don’t perish in a fiery crash due to a mechanical flaw. Et cetera.

To that end, there has been an interesting comment thread on Consumerist as to the relative importance of a degree versus on-the-job education. The post, entitled “The Best Lesson I Learned at College Was College Wasn’t Worth It” (how’s that for an incendiary headline?) posed a couple of interesting questions: are certain majors more amenable to getting a job? And at the heart of the question, why spend a bunch of money going to college if you could get a job without one? What is the point of college?

I’ll return to my earlier point of loving learning, loving school, and loving what I chose to study (even if it hasn’t made me an immediate billionaire). We all know college is expensive. Was it worth it for me? Absolutely, and not just because I gained fluency in another language, which anyone can do with enough dedication. At Agnes Scott, as is the case with the majority of liberal arts colleges, we are required to take a certain amount of what are essentially introductory courses, ones that mostly fall outside of our respective majors. This is a point of contention for many students, who run the spectrum from overwhelmed first years to seniors trying to graduate on time. The complaint is not a new one; during my sophomore year, I even wrote an opinion piece in our newspaper, the Profile, decrying our distributional requirement rule in favor of more modified structures like Smith’s or Vassar’s. But senior year made me change my tune, and a year away from academia reinforced my belief that the system works.

Full disclosure time: I have never been interested in maths or sciences. When I was younger, I came up with all sorts of excuses for that disinterest, but after the bellyaching, I was forced to see that it was my attitude, not my aptitude that left me avoiding those areas like the plague.* Anyway, the point: a liberal arts education enables a student to become well-rounded. How well-rounded could I be if, for example, I never took Astronomy with the brilliant (and hilarious) Dr. Amy Lovell? Would I have become a French major without the demands of meeting a language requirement? Without French 202, would I have taken the opportunity to study in France for a year — relatively inexpensively, thanks to ASC’s affiliation with ISEP —  with the necessary communicative skills to do more than just get by in the pharmacy? (Answer: maybe, but probably not.) Perhaps because of those two introductory requirements, I can nerd out about the Doppler Effect, turn around and read a French novel in about the same time as its English equivalent. There are plenty of astrophysicists and polyglots who can professionally exalt the academic importance of the two fields. It’s not just cocktail party conversation, y’all!

Though if anyone wants to invite me to a cocktail party wherein I get to put those learned skills to use, do let me know.

*Author’s Note — with catchphrases like “attitude, not aptitude,” I should be a motivational speaker. Goooo Bayside!

(In the hope that you’ll continue to read my screed, I’ve decided to spread out my posts on this subject. Stay tuned for my next post, which explains why creating an e-Portfolio could be the best use of your LA education! Also, please comment if you disagree with any of my points or just want to write me [c/o the liberal arts] a love letter.)

Losing our humanit(ies), or why we need to save the liberal arts (Pt. 1)

(This post is the first in a three-part series of Why the Liberal Arts Are Important.)

Who will you become? Martianus Capella, perhaps?

There has been plenty of media hullabaloo as of late as to various colleges and universities across the country drastically reducing their humanities departments, and it’s ruffled my feathers. Perhaps the most startling example is that of SUNY-Albany, which has decided to eliminate major, minor, and graduate programs in languages other than Spanish (i.e., French, German, and Russian), classics, and theatre. With the decision to cut these departments, SUNY-Albany seems to imply that language study is not “important” enough to merit full academic concentration — more to the point, that scholars choosing to specialize in these fields, and their subsequent work, are considered secondary to more “lucrative” majors (i.e., those that haven’t been cut). As a recent recipient of a French degree, and whole-hearted advocate for a liberal arts education, this is news that makes me worry. And hurts my feelings!

I may be in the naïve minority, but I did not choose my major (or my institute of higher learning) based on the illusion of guaranteed post-graduation employment. I’m not quite that naïve. Like many of my cohorts, I chose to attend a liberal arts college because — and here’s the shocker — I enjoy learning for the sake of learning, and wanted to get the most well-rounded education available to me. So before I reveal the connective thread of my obsession between the liberal arts and my position helping the campus community cultivate e-Portfolios, I’d like to spend a moment pontificating on the indisputable importance of a liberal arts education, and what risky business it could be for colleges to abandon the fundamental reasons for such an education.

I think there are two general reasons to continue education after high school: the first, to improve the quality of both analytical and abstract thinking; the second, to cultivate individual talents and skills that might prove valuable in adulthood. Both are excellent reasons to pursue a liberal arts degree, and the latter does not exclude a nuanced argument for vocational or technical schooling. I would like to meet the person who argues that post-secondary education is not integral for at least the aforementioned reasons; additionally, I am uncomfortable with the idea that some bachelor’s degrees are qualitatively “worth” more than others, that somehow I am less of a scholar because I chose French over Computer Science. Note that I said qualitative, not quantitative. I am under no delusion that my B.A. in French is more immediately marketable in today’s workforce than a CS  degree (which, before anyone gets upset, I am using as an example, not the rule). My liberal arts degree does more than simply enables me to be a product, however, it forces me to think deeply, live honorably and engage the intellectual and social challenges of my time. Apologies for the shameless ASC plug, but it’s true. In what working environment is a graduate who can demonstrate connective, reasonable thinking across disciplines not valuable?

(In the hope that you’ll continue to read my screed, I’ve decided to spread out my posts on this subject. Stay tuned for my next post, which tackles liberal arts v. vocational training, and then, how creating an e-Portfolio could be the best use of your LA education! Also, please comment if you disagree with any of my points or just want to write me [c/o the liberal arts] a love letter.)

Updated:Handouts section! … and assorted, related fun things.

Hello all! There’s a nip in the air and, believe it or not, the fall semester is almost to a close. From where I sit in the library, I can almost hear the collective sighs of procrastinatory anguish. Just a few more weeks, y’all!

Anyway, after much editing and re-editing, I have updated the Handouts section of this fair site to reflect my newest creation: “Integrating Communication Technology into Coursework: Blogging for the Class.” It’s meant to be a helpful tool for faculty who may be on the fence about including blogging into class exercises, and I’m hoping it serves everyone well. Long live Garamond, you classy typeface.

I’ll be up in your webspace in a few short hours with my newest post, an ode of sorts to the liberal arts (and why we need them) and how they can help you in setting up your e-Portfolio.