Media Education and the Liberal Arts

Media Education and the Liberal Arts
Author: Robert O. Blanchard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2020-07-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000149080

This book provides academic reformers with a blueprint for tackling the upheaval facing media education. It calls for a new professionalism that rejects the status quo, reflects the mission and diversity of individual programs, and demands a redefinition of both traditional media studies and the liberal arts.

Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century

Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century
Author: Robert E. Luckett Jr.
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-05-28
Genre: Education
ISBN: 149683318X

Contributions by William D. Adams, Sarah Archino, Mario J. Azevedo, Katrina Byrd, Rico D. Chapman, Helen O. Chukwuma, Monica Flippin Wynn, Tatiana Glushko, Eric J. Griffin, Kathi R. Griffin, Yumi Park Huntington, Thomas M. Kersen, Robert E. Luckett Jr., Floyd W. Martin, Preselfannie W. McDaniels, Dawn Bishop McLin, Lauren Ashlee Messina, Byron D'Andra Orey, Kathy Root Pitts, Candis Pizzetta, Lawrence Sledge, RaShell R. Smith-Spears, Joseph Martin Stevenson, Seretha D. Williams, and Karen C. Wilson-Stevenson Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century delves into the essential nature of the liberal arts in America today. During a time when the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math dominate the narrative around the future of higher education, the liberal arts remain vital but frequently dismissed academic pursuits. While STEAM has emerged as a popular acronym, the arts get added to the discussion in a way that is often rhetorical at best. Written by scholars from a diversity of fields and institutions, the essays in this collection legitimize the liberal arts and offer visions for the role of these disciplines in the modern world. From the arts, pedagogy, and writing to social justice, the digital humanities, and the African American experience, the essays that comprise Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the Twenty-First Century bring attention to the vast array of ways in which the liberal arts continue to be fundamental parts of any education. In an increasingly transactional environment, in which students believe a degree must lead to a specific job and set income, colleges and universities should take heed of the advice from these scholars. The liberal arts do not lend themselves to the capacity to do a single job, but to do any job. The effective teaching of critical and analytical thinking, writing, and speaking creates educated citizens. In a divisive twenty-first-century world, such a citizenry holds the tools to maintain a free society, redefining the liberal arts in a manner that may be key to the American republic.

The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs

The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs
Author: Richard A. Detweiler
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0262543109

Empirical evidence for the value of a liberal arts education: how and why it has a lasting impact on success, leadership, altruism, learning, and fulfillment. In ongoing debates over the value of a college education, the role of the liberal arts in higher education has been blamed by some for making college expensive, impractical, and even worthless. Defenders argue that liberal arts education makes society innovative, creative, and civic-minded. But these qualities are hard to quantify, and many critics of higher education call for courses of study to be strictly job-specific. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Detweiler, drawing on interviews with more than 1,000 college graduates aged 25 to 65, offers empirical evidence for the value of a liberal arts education. Detweiler finds that a liberal arts education has a lasting impact on success, leadership, altruism, learning, and fulfillment over a lifetime. Unlike other defenders of a liberal arts education, Detweiler doesn’t rely on philosophical arguments or anecdotes but on data. He developed a series of interview questions related to the content attributes of liberal arts (for example, course assignments and majors), the context attributes (out-of-class interaction with faculty and students, teaching methods, campus life), and the purpose attributes (adult life outcomes). Interview responses show that although both the content of study and the educational context are associated with significant life outcomes, the content of study has less relationship to positive adult life outcomes than the educational context. The implications of this research, Detweiler points out, range from the advantages of broadening areas of study to factors that could influence students’ decisions to attend certain colleges.

In Defense of a Liberal Education

In Defense of a Liberal Education
Author: Fareed Zakaria
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 93
Release: 2015-03-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0393247694

CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria argues for a renewed commitment to the world’s most valuable educational tradition. The liberal arts are under attack. The governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have all pledged that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts, and they seem to have an unlikely ally in President Obama. While at a General Electric plant in early 2014, Obama remarked, "I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree." These messages are hitting home: majors like English and history, once very popular and highly respected, are in steep decline. "I get it," writes Fareed Zakaria, recalling the atmosphere in India where he grew up, which was even more obsessed with getting a skills-based education. However, the CNN host and best-selling author explains why this widely held view is mistaken and shortsighted. Zakaria eloquently expounds on the virtues of a liberal arts education—how to write clearly, how to express yourself convincingly, and how to think analytically. He turns our leaders' vocational argument on its head. American routine manufacturing jobs continue to get automated or outsourced, and specific vocational knowledge is often outdated within a few years. Engineering is a great profession, but key value-added skills you will also need are creativity, lateral thinking, design, communication, storytelling, and, more than anything, the ability to continually learn and enjoy learning—precisely the gifts of a liberal education. Zakaria argues that technology is transforming education, opening up access to the best courses and classes in a vast variety of subjects for millions around the world. We are at the dawn of the greatest expansion of the idea of a liberal education in human history.

Doing Liberal Arts Education

Doing Liberal Arts Education
Author: Mikiko Nishimura
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2018-12-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9811328773

This book examines and shares concrete and specific strategies and policies for doing liberal arts education in a wide range of contexts. It deepens readers’ understanding of the processes of adopting interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches to the development and teaching of liberal arts courses, integrating diversity and inclusion in policies and practices of liberal arts education, and institutionalizing evidence-based policy making. Moreover, it provides educators and policymakers with practical guidelines on how to incorporate core values of liberal arts education.

Leadership and the Liberal Arts

Leadership and the Liberal Arts
Author: J. Wren
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2009-03-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0230620140

A collection of essays by presidents of prominent liberal arts colleges and leading intellectuals who reflect on the meaning of educating individuals for leadership and how it can be accomplished in ways consistent with the missions of liberal arts institutions.

Redesigning Liberal Education

Redesigning Liberal Education
Author: William Moner
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1421438216

Redesigning liberal education requires both pragmatic approaches to discover what works and radical visions of what is possible. The future of liberal education in the United States, in its current form, is fraught but full of possibility. Today's institutions are struggling to maintain viability, sustain revenue, and assert value in the face of rising costs. But we should not abandon the model of pragmatic liberal learning that has made America's colleges and universities the envy of the world. Instead, Redesigning Liberal Education argues, we owe it to students to reform liberal education in ways that put broad and measurable student learning as the highest priority. Written by experts in higher education, the book is organized into two sections. The first section focuses on innovations at 13 institutions: Brown University, College of the Holy Cross, Connecticut College, Elon University, Florida International University, George Mason University, Georgetown University, Lasell College, Northeastern University, Rollins College, Smith College, Susquehanna University, and the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. Chapters about these institutions consider the vast spectrum of opportunities and challenges currently faced by students, faculty, staff, and administrators, while also offering "radical visions" of the future of liberal education in the United States. Accompanying vision chapters written by some of the foremost leaders in higher education touch on a wide array of subjects and themes, from artificial intelligence and machines to the role that human dispositions, mindsets, resilience, and time play in how we guide students to ideas for bringing playful concepts of creativity and openness into our work. Ultimately, Redesigning Liberal Education reveals how humanizing forces, including critical thinking, collaboration, cross-cultural competencies, resilience, and empathy, can help drive our world. This uplifting collection is a celebration of the innovative work being done to achieve the promise of a valuable, engaging, and practical undergraduate liberal education. Isis Artze-Vega, Denise S. Bartell, Randy Bass, John Bodinger de Uriarte, Laurie Ann Britt-Smith, Jacquelyn Dively Brown, Phillip M. Carter, Nancy L. Chick, Michael J. Daley, Maggie Debelius, Janelle Papay Decato, Peter Felten, Ashley Finley, Dennis A. Frey Jr., Chris W. Gallagher, Evan A. Gatti, Lisa Gring-Pemble, Kristína Moss Gudrún Gunnarsdóttir, Anthony Hatcher, Toni Strollo Holbrook, Derek Lackaff, Leo Lambert, Kristin Lange, Sherry Lee Linkon, Anne M. Magro, Maud S. Mandel, Jessica Metzler, Borjana Mikic, William Moner, Phillip Motley, Matthew Pavesich, Uta G. Poiger, Rebecca Pope-Ruark, Michael Reder, Michael S. Roth, Emily Russell, Heather Russell, Ann Schenk, Michael Shanks, Susan Rundell Singer, Andrea A. Sinn, Christina Smith, Allison K. Staudinger, William M. Sullivan, Connie Svabo, Meredith Twombly, Betsy Verhoeven, David J. Voelker, Scott Windham, Mary C. Wright, Catherine Zeek

You Can Do Anything

You Can Do Anything
Author: George Anders
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2017-08-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0316548855

In a tech-dominated world, the most needed degrees are the most surprising: the liberal arts. Did you take the right classes in college? Will your major help you get the right job offers? For more than a decade, the national spotlight has focused on science and engineering as the only reliable choice for finding a successful post-grad career. Our destinies have been reduced to a caricature: learn to write computer code or end up behind a counter, pouring coffee. Quietly, though, a different path to success has been taking shape. In You Can Do Anything, George Anders explains the remarkable power of a liberal arts education - and the ways it can open the door to thousands of cutting-edge jobs every week. The key insight: curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren't unruly traits that must be reined in. You can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. And if you know how to attack the job market, your opportunities will be vast. In this book, you will learn why resume-writing is fading in importance and why "telling your story" is taking its place. You will learn how to create jobs that don't exist yet, and to translate your campus achievements into a new style of expression that will make employers' eyes light up. You will discover why people who start in eccentric first jobs - and then make their own luck - so often race ahead of peers whose post-college hunt focuses only on security and starting pay. You will be ready for anything.

Liberal Arts for the Christian Life

Liberal Arts for the Christian Life
Author: Jeffry C. Davis
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2012-04-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433524058

For over forty years, Leland Ryken has championed and modeled a Christian liberal arts education. His scholarship and commitment to integrating faith with learning in the classroom have influenced thousands of students who have sat under his winsome teaching. Published in honor of Professor Ryken and presented on the occasion of his retirement from Wheaton College, this compilation carries on his legacy of applying a Christian liberal arts education to all areas of life. Five sections explore the background of a Christian liberal arts education, its theological basis, habits and virtues, differing approaches, and ultimate aims. Contributors including Philip Ryken, Jeffry Davis, Duane Litfin, John Walford, Alan Jacobs, and Jim Wilhoit analyze liberal arts as they relate to the disciplines, the Christian faith, and the world. Also included are a transcript of a well-known 1984 chapel talk delivered by Leland Ryken on the student's calling and practical chapters on how to read, write, and speak well. Comprehensive in scope, this substantial volume will be a helpful guide to anyone involved in higher education, as well as to students, pastors, and leaders looking for resources on the importance of faith in learning.

The Arts of Learning and Communication

The Arts of Learning and Communication
Author: Benedict M. Ashley
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 633
Release: 2009-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1606089315

The present book is a tool for the teaching of the liberal arts in high school, or in the freshman year of college for those students whose high school studies were inadequate. It is intended to be at once a handbook and a textbook. As a handbook it should be used by the student throughout his four years in high school in every course. Every teacher in the school should insist that in each subject of the curriculum the processes of definition, statement, and argumentation outlined here should be exactly practiced in the student's reading recitation, discussion, and examination for that subject. In this way the transfer of training can be made explicit and effective. On the other hand this work is also a textbook to assist in the learning of these logical processes. The most appropriate place for its use is in the customary English courses. Here it will not replace the customary material but it will serve as a guide for teacher and student in using material to develop the liberal arts.