Dr. Stephen Biscotte, Director of General Education at Virginia Tech
In May, I had the pleasure of attending the Liberal Education 2019 Conference hosted by Mount Royal University and Medicine Hat College in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The premise was simple: a group of people dedicated to teaching general education get locked (sorry, strongly encouraged to remain) in a hotel conference room for two-and-a-half days of 20min paper talks and keynote presentations interrupted only by lunch and coffee breaks.
Joyce Lucke, the Director of AGLS, and I presented on the current intersection of general education, technology, and workforce development across the United States. For fun, Joyce played the role of an industry representative calling for higher education reform to better prepare students for the ever-changing workforce. She demanded graduates with more creativity, cultural awareness, technological agility, and capacity for critical thinking. I played the part of higher education and responded defensively with examples of all the ways we are already leveraging general education to prepare students for this complex future: a) infusing technological literacy competencies and outcomes, b) offering courses on big issues in technology and society, c) infusing assignments that build digital literacy, and d) building structures that allow students to integrate computer programming with the liberal arts.
The role-play ended with the recognition that we both want the same thing: lifelong learners with all the skills, knowledge, and capacities to thrive in an ever-changing world. Industry and higher education can coexist, collaborate, and communicate but it will take work on both sides. Liberal education is preparing students for their future and work is a big part of that. What is liberal education in the age of automation? Asked and answered! Thank you for your time, don’t forget to tip your waiters…
Wait, could it be more complicated than that?
In her keynote just after lunch, Dr. Maria Sachiko Cecire from the Experimental Humanities group at Bard College, swiftly challenged higher education’s role as one of service to industry, a chaser of market trends, a workforce producer, a supporter of technology for technology’s sake. Sure, we can achieve these things, but at what cost? Other talks echoed this sentiment. An algorithm can produce art or music (give-or-take), but there is an obvious loss of human experience in its creation. Computer models can support the work of ecology and medicine, but it can also accelerate the most devastating components of the Anthropocene. For Syrian refugees, if we don’t humanize the data and give voice to the silenced, the cost is freedom.
So perhaps liberal education is you growing accustomed to operating in the world with one set of tools, values, and perspectives then being offered some breadcrumbs (or bombshells) to lead you down a path to consider the world differently. You are uncomfortable. You are conflicted. You are desperate to read more, explore more, and learn more to make sense of it all. The familiar becomes foreign, the common becomes exotic and worthy of further analysis. No matter where you go, you can’t seem to turn it off. It gives you this sort of constant low-grade headache… the good kind of soreness that comes from exercising a muscle that has atrophied in the day-to-day.
Is liberal education for everyone? According to the new president at Mount Royal University, Dr. Tim Rahilly, “all future citizens and employees, not just the privileged, must have opportunities to examine the world and human condition.” We can’t follow a model where some students gain trade skills while others gain a liberal education.
What is liberal education to me? It’s a long-time science educator and administrator at a large comprehensive public research-focused polytechnic land-grant institution being challenged to question, reconsider, and reevaluate the world and his role in it, thinking about education to liberate rather than just recreate, or as Dr. Karim Youssef put it “education for appropriating ambiguity rather than fabricating certainty.” I’m left with more questions than answers: Who are we, why are we here, and how do we best educate our students? I need an aspirin…
How do you sustain liberal education? It takes practice by all of us. To think this group carves out time and space to come together every year in Calgary to share, challenge, celebrate, and suffer in liberal education is a powerful thing. I asked multiple people why they agree to lock themselves in a room (sorry again… voluntarily remain in place) for two-and-a-half days every summer? Without fail the responses were “we all really care about this stuff” and “because of Karim.” It’s obvious that Karim Dharamsi, Chair of General Education at Mount Royal University, is passionate about general and liberal education and invokes a strong sense of community among the members of the department.
I thank Karim, Jim Zimmer, and all of the participants for welcoming us into their ‘home’ for a few days. The food was great (so… Calgary steak… wow… am I right?!?). The people were wonderful. Calgary to Banff was one of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever taken. It was a truly memorable trip. It was Star Trek meets Alexander the Great meets Andy Warhol all rolled around in a pile of yak dung (you had to be there…).
Yet, I felt more uncomfortable, conflicted, and purpose-shaken than I have felt in quite a while… which was definitely the best part.
This is why I love being a part of AGLS. Every time we add a new institutional member like Mount Royal University, we expand the expertise, perspective, and passion of the AGLS. I can’t wait to hear about more mind-bending work like this in Orlando and throughout the year to come.