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Marketing and University Communication UW-Green Bay, CL 815 2420 Nicolet Drive Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 (920) 465-2626 E-mail: hildebrs@uwgb.edu Last update: 3/13/08 |
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In
the News Archive - Year:
February 29, 2008 Guest column: By Scott Furlong, dean of liberal arts and sciences
The University of Wisconsin System is celebrating, or shall I say promoting, "leap" in another way. In 2005, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) started a 10-year initiative to promote liberal education in higher education. Liberal Education and America's Promise (or LEAP) provides a series of learning outcomes and goals that all institutes of higher education should be promoting. As the dean of liberal arts and sciences at UW-Green Bay, I believe the value of a liberal education is critical to every student's education, and represents the central component of any undergraduate degree.
Unfortunately, "liberal education" is a loaded term that often is misconstrued to mean ideologically to the left, rather than its actual meaning referring to the idea of liberating one's mind. A liberal education is one that encourages an individual to think and be creative, to make decisions based on reasoned analysis.
The essential learning outcomes as discussed by LEAP include: (1) knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world; (2) intellectual and practical skills; (3) personal and social responsibility; and (4) integrative learning (for a more in-depth discussion of these outcomes see http:// liberaleducation.uwsa.edu).
Our chancellor, Bruce Shepard, likes to comment that the education our students at UW-Green Bay are earning will prepare them for jobs and careers that have not yet been invented. This is the real value of a liberal arts education as discussed by the AAC&U. Rather than teaching specific information that likely will be out of date in short order, a liberal arts education teaches students how to think and adapt to changing needs, a changing world and changing problems.
A liberal education is not just for students who take the traditional liberal arts and science majors such as English, philosophy or political science. It is necessary for all of our students: the artists and the business leaders, the scientists and the nurses, the economists and the social workers. All students and professions gain from these outcomes, and perhaps more importantly, so does our society.
To illustrate, consider the presidential election campaign. These learning outcomes are critical in this process. The social and personal responsibility learning outcome calls for us to be civically engaged. The knowledge outcome provides us with the informational elements to understand the process and the issues being discussed. But we need our ability to think and integrate all of this information and not be taken in by simple 30-second ads that attempt to reduce complex issues to black-and-white answers.
A liberal education is at the core of helping us understand the grayness of these issues, and our state university system is at the forefront in helping to make this happen.
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