Remaking College: Innovation and the Liberal Arts

Introduction. Updating the Liberal Arts Mission for the Twenty-First Century

Introduction Updating the Liberal Arts Mission for the Twenty-First Century Residential liberal arts colleges may well be among the most resilient institutions in our culture. Indeed, the colleges represented in this book are among the oldest continuing institutions in the United States. With considerable fortitude and adaptability, they have continued through times of financial recession and depression , wars and conflicts of all sizes, the rise and decline first of the agrarian culture and then of industrialization, several technological revolutions, and massive shifts in cultural norms and practices that have occurred throughout U.S. history. Over the course of the past two hundred years, critics have boldly and frequently proclaimed the irrelevancy and predicted the extinction of the liberal arts college. The reader of this book will find little to support such critics and their forecasts. Today many liberal arts colleges are not only surviving and flourishing but are also places to discover innovative ideas and practices in knowledge creation and democratic community. The contemporary residential college is a surprising case study in flexibility, strength, and irrepressibility, all key components of the kind of resiliency that individuals and institutions need in the twenty-first century. If these chapters address the question “How are liberal arts colleges faring in the current environment?” the answer must be that they seem to be invigorated by current challenges and opportunities. When times get tough, it appears, liberal arts colleges get creative, resourceful, and wise. To live, work, or visit a contemporary residential liberal arts college is to discover an environment teeming with intensity and innovation. Faculty and students are pushing academic boundaries out of the classroom and into cutting-edge research in the sciences, communitybased courses that cross a range of disciplines, and problem-based courses that address the major issues of the day, for example; and leaders are debating the value of competing priorities and how resources should be allocated. 2 Remaking College At the same time, the wisdom conveyed through traditional models of teaching , learning, and research continues to be practiced. Students learn and live in a culture that applies both rigor and agility to experiencing the fullness of knowledge . This effort is constantly reinforced and expanded by a residential community that is inclusive and diverse, well-rounded and cosmopolitan, and oriented toward helping students learn the skills, values, and commitments they need to build democratic communities. Of course, the difficult challenges that liberal arts colleges face must be taken with the utmost seriousness. Some of these issues, perhaps most important the challenges of the financial model, have no easy or clear answers. But, as these chapters show, even as academic communities craft options, consider alternatives , and deal with increasingly complex situations, incredible innovation is occurring within these institutions. Whether it be updating the mission, developing new institutional structures, addressing issues of governance, or reimagining the residential experience, our authors join with Bill Bowen in concluding: “There is more to hope than to fear.” As these chapters powerfully suggest, the twofold mission of liberal arts colleges —to provide a holistic educational formation for young adults and to serve the democratic good of associative living—is adapting, evolving, and transforming in substance and style because of technology, governance, partnerships with universities and other entities, and even the sheer scope of what one considers the social good. The first part of this mission relates to developing the individual for a life of success, satisfaction, and service. The heart of this formation is teaching students how to think critically and creatively. “Critical thinking” is the heart and soul of liberal arts education, but these essays propose that its shape in the twenty-first century is evolving and may be, in some ways, transformed in quite dramatic ways. As David Oxtoby and Wendy Hill suggest, the twenty-first century seems to be exploding with interdisciplinary courses, programs, centers, and even memorandums of understanding for faculty members whose work bridges more than one discipline. Innovation in knowledge and the desire to embrace critical thinking as problem solving offer an expansion of critical thinking to include both disciplinary and cross-disciplinary ways of understanding. As Brian Rosenberg demonstrates, some models of critical thinking are being transformed through problem-based learning in centers. An area of what we might call ambiguous transformation for how we understand critical thinking is technology. Kevin Guthrie details the radical changes that technology offers our education model, especially in terms Introduction 3...