Welcome to the newsletter & blog from the College of Arts & Sciences. In this issue we feature some of the exciting news from the areas of the arts and humanities. As a Jesuit, Catholic, humanist liberal arts University, with a deep understanding of how all the disciplines in the College contribute to the formation of the whole person, many of us are troubled by recent developments that have led to a nation-wide decline in enrollments in the arts and humanities.
Our majors are relevant in today’s world, and increasingly so! You may have heard about how top medical schools have set out to lure English and History majors, following the development of programs such as HuMed, designed by Nathan Kase, former Dean of Medical Education at Mount Sinai because he “really had a firm belief that you couldn’t be a good doctor and a well-rounded doctor – relate to patients and communicate with them – unless you really had a good grounding in the liberal arts.” You may have read that Tech CEOs want employees with Liberal Arts degrees. One third of Fortune 500 CEOs have such degrees. In the words of Kenyon College’s Patricia Nugent, “It’s a horrible irony that at the very moment the world has become more complex, we’re encouraging our young people to be highly specialized in one task,” she says. “We are doing a disservice to young people by telling them that life is a straight path. The liberal arts are still relevant because they prepare students to be flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances.” Or that law schools across the nation seek to attract students with outstanding writing, speaking, and analytical skills. The College of Arts and Sciences just partnered with the Gonzaga School of Law to design our first 3+3 program. Qualified students who pursue a Religious Studies major will be able to graduate with a BA and a JD in six years. Liberal arts degrees are not a luxury; as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes, “the humanities enrich our souls.” Who would we be as a people, as a nation, without the arts and the humanities?
We often call the College of Arts and Sciences “the heart and soul” of the University. We offer distinctive educational experiences that prepare students for real-world tasks, engaging them in critical thinking and reasoning, communication, and analysis. We distinguish ourselves by involving majors in research projects and service learning activities to help them apply those skills for the benefit of others. Our goal is to prepare our students for leading meaningful, productive lives, and to act with compassion and with a strong sense of social justice.
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– Elisabeth Mermann-Jozwiak, Dean