Thoughts for the Class of 2016
Each year a faculty member is asked to write a statement for the
incoming class about the value of a liberal arts education here at
Butler. This year's essay, "The Liberal Arts Banquet," was written
by Dr. Anne Wilson, Professor of Chemistry, College of Liberal Arts
& Sciences.
The Liberal Arts Banquet
Welcome to Butler University and welcome to the College of
Liberal Arts and Sciences! It has become the tradition of our
college that you receive an essay from a faculty member about the
benefits of getting a degree in the liberal arts. Butler
University has a mission statement, which states:
Butler's mission is to provide the
highest quality of liberal and professional education and to
integrate the liberal arts into professional education, by creating
and fostering a stimulating intellectual community built upon
interactive dialogue and inquiry among faculty and students.
The liberal arts, which are the humanities, social sciences and
natural sciences, are at the center of the entire educational
mission of the University and they infuse the study of every
major. You may be wondering, "Why should you choose a major
in the liberal arts if you could get the benefits of a liberal arts
education in a major in one of our professional schools like the
College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences or the College of
Communication?" Quite simply, majors in these schools are
based in the liberal arts, but the focus of these programs is to
instruct graduates to perform a particular task or job. They
are preparing dancers, teachers, and accountants to perform in the
roles of dancer, teacher, and accountant. We won't be
grooming you for particular positions, but rather giving you
broader skills that you will need and use for the rest of your life
in almost everything that you do.
You can think of it this way, study of the liberal arts at a
college or university can be likened to joining a huge
banquet. You have many choices of what to eat, when to eat,
and how much should you eat. There are familiar dishes,
servings from other cultures, combinations of exotic spices you
have never tried, and cuisines that you did not know existed.
You can sample a taste from every bowl at our feast until you find
the one that satisfies you. Our colleagues in the
professional schools join us at the banquet as well, sample a
single serving, and then leave us for their professional
study. You are here for the full tasting menu, a little bit
of every dish, including dessert!
You have a large number of academic majors to choose from in the
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The last time I
checked, there were thirty-five. If you don't find one you
like, you could always create an individualized major to fit your
needs. Once you make that choice of a major, or change that
choice, add a minor, or add that second (or third!) major, you
will learn how to think as they do in that discipline. I do
not mean to imply that you have not learned how to think. I
am sure that your academic preparation to this point has had you
reflecting and reasoning quite a bit. However, within your
subject of study within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences,
you will not only study the required skills of your discipline, you
will also learn complexities like how a discussion is organized,
how to support the points made in the discussion, the opposing
schools of thought or controversies on particular topics, as well
as discovering and appreciating the general philosophy of your
chosen field. You will be able to take an opinion, support it
with quotes, facts, or data and it will become a reasoned
statement. I can assure you, that whatever your next step is,
employers, graduate and professional schools, and parenthood all
require the ability to take what you know and adapt it to diverse
situations, rather than applying a known recipe to generate an
expected outcome.
Through all this study, you should be generating an
understanding of your chosen discipline. You will see how
disparate pieces can fit together to become the whole. As you
put together these parts, you may find that there are portions that
you don't agree with. You will be able to explain why these
opposing points of view exist without having to accept them as
truth. This does not mean that you have to let go of what you
believe, whether that is gravity or democratic socialism or
existentialism. You just need to understand what you believe,
be able to understand both sides of the argument, and occasionally,
be able to admit when your argument breaks down. If we could
apply understanding to every part of our lives, things might be
much better. A little understanding can go a long way.
Along the way, you are going to find out a great deal about the
process of learning. You will figure out how to effectively
take in information, determine what you are able to comprehend
completely, and conclude how long it takes you to master the
knowledge you need. This recognition of your learning style
is critical. When you leave us and move on to your next step,
you will find that more than 70 % of what you need to know is "on
the job training" regardless if that job is as a tax attorney, a
parent, a scientist, or a social worker. Graduate and
professional schools will expect that you know how to acquire new
information. Employers will require it if you want to be
successful. Your children will depend on it. Life does not
come with an instruction manual, and maintaining lifelong learning
is a critical skill. There are no hard and fast rules that address
every challenge or apply to every situation.
Going back to our banquet, your professional school colleagues
will sample their single serving of thinking, understanding and
learning. After nibbling many of the items on the menu, you
will savor thinking, understanding, and learning, not only as an
appetizer, but also as your complete multi-course meal. What
is the dessert? I believe there are two other skills you will
be learning through your study of the liberal arts, and these are
what truly differentiate your liberal arts education from other
bachelors programs.
Perhaps more like the coffee that goes with dessert, the first
of these skills is the ability to identify a problem, challenge or
issue. This is not the ability to point out where someone
else has gone wrong, finding a trivial mistake that has little
impact, or where someone has deviated from an accepted method or
system. I mean identifying the fundamental problems that lead
to larger difficulties. The world is very complex and the
simple problems that are easy to identify and solve have already
been addressed. The liberal arts allow you to look deeply at
a situation, separate the symptoms of the problem from the actual
issue, and give you the terminology to identify the challenge
accurately. For example, you notice a drop in the academic
performance of your child. You will not make the easy
assumption that your child is lazy (although he or she might be),
but will be able to determine that they are distracted in class
because they are not getting enough sleep at night. Complex
topics like world hunger, economic crises, healthcare, political
unrest, and education will require careful analysis to separate the
real challenges from the artificial issues created by those who
have the most to gain by framing the issue in a particular way.
The real dessert item, your sweet reward for so much work, is
that the study of the liberal arts will give you the skill of
asking the right question. We are inundated with information
from all sorts of sources, but we can't process all of this
information. With your liberal arts knowledge, you will
correctly identify the problem, and this will allow you to ask the
question that brings us all toward actual solutions. It is
much more than punching a few things into Google. It is
taking all that you have learned from your courses in the sciences,
social sciences and humanities and applying that knowledge in new
ways to ask "can we do better?" There is no system or method
that you can apply to ask the right question, this ability will
come from the diversity of experiences that you will have in your
study of the liberal arts.
Returning to the mission statement of the University, remember
that you are not at this banquet alone. We really do "create
and foster a stimulating intellectual community built upon
interactive dialogue and inquiry among faculty and students."
You will have classmates in the liberal arts who will be studying
different things than you and these colleagues will ask you
questions that may be unexpected or unwelcome. This is similar to
someone insisting that you try a new food - you should embrace the
opportunity! Butler faculty members are joining you on this
journey as well. We may have eaten at a few more banquets
than you have, but we have chosen to be here with you to continue
to test our limits, to try new things, and to continue to
learn. Pay special attention to the "interactive dialogue"
part of the Butler mission - this means that we need your full
participation - you can't just take your food to go.
Enjoy the liberal arts banquet and be sure to eat your
fill. Find the right questions to ask and hopefully the
answers to those questions will be the beginning of a lifelong
journey. I am delighted that you all have chosen to start
that journey with us in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at
Butler University and welcome to our table.
Anne Wilson, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry
Butler University
August 2012