Excerpt from Erin Adler’s Star Tribune article, Liberal arts are on a long decline. Some Minnesota schools are finding new ways to boost them.
College leaders say that the liberal arts majors provide graduates with a long list of practical skills, including critical thinking, communication skills, the ability to work well with others and adaptability. They also teach people to write persuasively, recognize patterns and pull together disparate information.
Across the state, administrators and professors said they’re finding new ways to ensure the liberal arts have staying power and remain relevant.
This year, Winona State University started its University Scholars Program, seven courses that meld the liberal arts with workplace skills, Provost Brenda Kowalewski said. One class combines English and computer science, with students working on digital storytelling projects. Another bridges history and public policy, she said.
“We have a tendency to think about this increasingly technology-enhanced world … as shifting us away from needing the liberal arts,” Kowalewski said. “I would make the argument that that shift in technology … is actually increasing our need for more liberal arts education, but you have to help people see that connection.”
From Metro State to Minnesota State University, Mankato, other professors said they were doing something similar. Mankato is merging subjects like gender studies with criminal justice while philosophy faculty teach most ethics classes at the business school, said Michael Olson, interim dean of Mankato’s College of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
At the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus, “interdisciplinary majors and minors that cover a lot more area” are in-demand, said GerShun Avilez, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, the largest school at the U. Psychology is the most popular major, Avilez said.
Students are intrigued by majors that cross disciplinary boundaries like urban studies, he said, and there’s a new major combining business and economics this year.
“When we see the shifting numbers, we assume that means people don’t care about [the liberal arts], but actually they’re looking for other majors,” Avilez said.
At St. Mary’s, where many liberal arts majors were cut, students are still exposed to them through popular extracurriculars like theater, which isn’t dominated by theater majors anymore.
“That’s one of those hopeful places where, if we’ve reached the end of the road for certain departmental and disciplinary possibilities … it doesn’t mean that it’s over,” said Joe Tadie, a theology and philosophy professor at St. Mary’s.
Many officials said they’re seeing more students double majoring or minoring in the liberal arts, too.
The number of English minors at Macalester has more than tripled in the last decade, Tange said.
“The idea that they can choose two things frees them up to choose something like a liberal art,” said Jason Lowrey, vice president of academic affairs at Bethany Lutheran College, adding that students can pursue their passion.
Julian Klein, a University of Northwestern student, is doing that, majoring in theater and intercultural communication with a business minor, adding the communications major because theater “is one of the least stable jobs you can get.”
People regularly ask him what he’s going to do for a job, he said.
“I look at [my majors] and say, ‘Where can’t I go?’” Klein said. “I think it is OK for me to pursue these things that I love and not know exactly what I’m going to do with them in my professional life.”
The St. Paul university debuted its Classical Christian Honors College this fall, with courses like “The Ancient World and the Hebrew Scriptures.” Students are studying philosophy, theology and literature ranging from Homer to Shakespeare.
Students pursuing any major can enroll in the 40-credit, three-year program, which satisfies most required general education credits. They can also pursue a second major in Great Books through the new college. Sixteen students are signed up but the program will grow, said Ryan Griffith, dean of the program.
“Institutions like ours recognize that the liberal arts, really both historically and in the present, are valuable for equipping men and women to be good thinkers, critical thinkers and really carry themselves forward in any field of knowledge,” Griffith said.
Kathleen Peter, a senior at Metro State double majoring in English and philosophy, said there’s a big misconception that liberal arts majors don’t get jobs, adding that fellow humanities majors plan to go to graduate school, teach or find employment in something like human resources. She’s still choosing between law school and graduate school for English.
“I kind of realized I needed a major where I could be myself, express myself … but still sort of have those soft skills of reading and writing, critical thinking,” she said.
