THE POWER OF A LIBERAL ARTS
STORY BY WALLIS SHAMIEH ’15
profiles by Meg DePanise ’15
A
liberal arts education offers students more than just a well-rounded college education. It’s a robust, integrated learning experience that teaches students to connect knowledge, think creatively and follow their passions. It is not an education based on learning individual components necessary for a career or trade, but rather, on learning how to bring together information from across disciplines—including humanities and the social and natural sciences—for the most powerful education experience possible. The idea isn’t just to memorize facts and figures, but to co-create and innovate with professors and classmates. “There’s often a misconcep-
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tion that students do not select majors in a liberal arts education,” said Lisa Littlefield, Ph.D., director of the Hood College Career Center. “However, students do select majors, with general education courses surrounding them. By combining majors, minors and general education coursework, students develop a unique skill set that sets them apart from competition in the job market.” A liberal arts education encourages students to develop critical thinking skills and gives them a global perspective, an invaluable asset with countless applications. According to the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AACU), the essential learning outcomes
of a contemporary liberal arts education include “knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world, intellectual and practical skills, personal and social responsibility, and integrative and applied learning.” These skills are necessary for students to succeed no matter their chosen professions, and teach them to adapt, change and transform as they progress through their lives and careers. In today’s job market, employees will make on average five to seven career changes in their lifetime, and thus will require these skills for decades to come. “There’s two types of thinking. Convergent and divergent,” says David Gurzick, Ph.D., associate professor of manage-
