Bringing Value Back to Liberal Arts and Sciences Education

The Liberal Arts and Sciences model of education is such an integral part of academia that few professors or students—much less anyone beyond their college years—have thought deeply about its value. Small private colleges sometimes offer only liberal arts degrees, and most large, public institutions like CU Denver build undergraduate education around a liberal arts and sciences framework. As elementary a part of the American education system as the liberal arts may seem, there are opponents who would like to see its centrality to American higher education diminished. In a February 2011 speech to the nation’s governors, Microsoft founder and famous college drop-out Bill Gates suggested that states waste taxpayers’ money by subsidizing public university departments in the liberal arts. Shortly thereafter a government taskforce in Florida, under Governor Rick Scott, proposed lower tuition rates for students majoring in biotech and engineering fields, arguing that the state should subsidize only those seeking degrees that they deem lead to stronger industry for the state.

However, professionals gathering data to study how education prepares students for careers give strong arguments against this mindset. Steve Yoder in The Fiscal Times (Jan 9, 2013: Students Are Fleeing Liberal Arts - How It Could Hurt the U.S.) cites a 2011 study done for the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which reported that for new graduates, "Income-wise, liberal arts majors catch up with their career-major peers a decade after graduation, as skills gained from a liberal arts education—clear communication, for example—become more valuable in many careers over time." Former Beloit College president Victor Ferrall, author of the 2011 book Liberal Arts at the Brink, argues that since Americans change jobs on average at least five or six times in the course of their careers a strategically pin-pointed education limits employee access to new avenues. Most recently, in an online survey among employers conducted on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) by Hart Research Associates, published April 10, 2013, the following statistics stand out:

• 95% of employers "put a priority on hiring people with the intellectual and interpersonal skills that will help them contribute to innovation in the workplace"
• 95% of employers say that "a candidate's demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major"
• 93% of employers say that they are asking employees to "take on more responsibilities and to use a broader set of skills than in the past"
• 83% of employers agreed that regardless of their major every college student should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences.

Jeff Franklin, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Curriculum & Student Affairs, organized the Learning Enhancement Taskforce (LET) in 2011 to challenge notions of not only the detractors but also the supporters of liberal arts and sciences education. Franklin feels strongly that the skills of a liberal education—including inquiry and analysis, creative and critical thinking, written and oral communication, quantitative and information literacy, and intercultural knowledge and competence—are among the most valuable any student can gain from a college experience, both for their personal and professional future. The problem? Too many students leave universities without those capabilities. The solution for Franklin and the taskforce is rethinking the design of liberal education at CU Denver to increase learning, retention, success, and the benefit to an educated society.  

A Call to Arms to Integrate Education

In a March 2012 CLAS Dean’s Notes, Franklin posed the questions, "What should a liberal arts and sciences education do to prepare students for life, citizenship, and work in an increasingly global, diverse, and technology-driven society?" and "In a rapidly changing world where capabilities and dispositions will have longer currency than content knowledge, how might a liberal education better provide what 21st-century students need?" Since becoming Associate Dean, Franklin has dedicated a great deal of his energies to answering questions like these, and extending the taskforce’s inquiry to challenging questions about how the answers might affect core and major requirements, as well as curricula and teaching methods. 

To start the process, the taskforce needed to evaluate alternative models of liberal arts and sciences education, study nation-wide research and examples, gather data, and consult widely. "The first two orders of business were self-education and prioritizing issues and tasks," explains Franklin. "We will not entirely reinvent the wheel; rather, we are learning from studies published from universities that already have gone through this process and made changes." CU Denver is far from alone in taking on the challenge of evaluating its educational mission. Commonly, three recurrent themes have guided reforms of liberal education: responsibility (by both faculty and students for improving student learning), intentionality (in faculty design of curricula and student plans of study, making the implicit explicit) and integration (of curricula across majors, majors and core, and all other educational experiences).

The taskforce consists of the following faculty and staff members  in addition to Associate Deans Franklin and Marjorie Levine-Clark (Associate Dean for Planning and Initiatives): Cecilio Alvarez (Advising), Tod Duncan (Biology), Mitch Handelsman (Psychology), Devin Jenkins (Modern Languages), Mary Lovit (Dean’s Office), Lucy McGuffey (Political Science), Brian Page (Geography/ES), Paul Stretesky (School of Public Affairs and Chair of the Core Curriculum Committee), Christine Stroup-Benham (Assistant Vice Chancellor for Institutional Research and Effectiveness), Diana Tomback (Biology), William Wagner (History) and Margaret Woodhull (Masters of Humanities).

From Traditional to Integrated Education

Franklin says, "Integrative learning occurs when students experience meaningful links between knowledge from multiple disciplines, general education, co-curricular activities, and the natural and social world. It prepares students to synthesize learning from diverse contexts to solve unscripted real-world problems." After their extensive research and discussion period, the taskforce agreed that the Essential Learning Outcomes (ELOs) developed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities could provide a framework for creating a more integrated educational experience for undergraduates, helping them make the connections between knowledge and experience in multiple contexts to solve unscripted, real-world problems. Each of the sixteen ELOs comes with a detailed VALUE Rubric, which clearly explains why and how the skillset is essential, as well as intended learning outcomes for the student. More information and a complete list of ELOs are available at the AAC&U website. These rubrics have been shared with CLAS Faculty and discussed at over 20 presentations made by the taskforce with interested groups. The ELOs were created and vetted by faculty from institutions across the nation and have been widely adopted as a new structuring standard for liberal arts education. Before recommending the ELOs for CLAS, however, the taskforce sent out a questionnaire to CLAS faculty (tenured, tenure-track, senior instructors, and instructors), asking their opinion on individual learning outcomes. With a 78% response rate, the taskforce was heartened by the feedback they received, and felt secure in moving forward.

The first report from the taskforce came out in January 2013. Among specific recommendations the report formulated another important question: "How can we be more purposeful in the design of our curriculum and make the experience of our students more cohesive?" Moving forward the taskforce has asked department chairs to continue the dialogue that the taskforce began throughout this academic year, so that faculty can begin implementing ELOs into curriculum planning and syllabus creation. Making ELOs work for student learning will likely look different in each discipline, but the outcome should be a more interconnected and rewarding learning experience for students college-wide.

This taskforce itself had a valuable learning experience this past July when six members attended the Association of American Colleges and Universities' Summer Institute on Integrative Learning and the Departments – Faculty Leaders for the 21st Century at Portland State University. The purpose of attending this large national conference was further discussion and brain-storming with likeminded educators and administrators from all over the country, as well as learning about a wide variety of best-practices in liberal arts education reform. The taskforce stressed in a presentation to CLAS Directors and Chairs in August that the conference solidified several objectives for them, including: the importance of faculty (in collaboration with staff and students) leading the way in educating and justifying to upper administration, legislators, and the public the value of liberal arts; learning outcomes assessment being essential to student learning and success; faculty development as an essential key to any significant pedagogical or curricular reform; that all students, not just the most prepared, deserve the same high-quality liberal education (especially the historically underserved); and most of all that "Integrative Liberal Education is a powerful, appropriate master concept for the focus of the LET."

Integrating Into the Future

From the beginning, the taskforce's primary goal has been to conceive of the educational experience that would be most valuable to students and society, and then redesign education within CLAS as needed to provide that education here. Franklin and the taskforce now feel more strongly than ever that they will be able to achieve this goal.

Refining and gaining support for implementing the recommendations of the taskforce will involve another long period of consideration and cooperation. In coming semesters the taskforce plans to provide training and consultation for faculty who are in anyway nervous or uncomfortable moving forward, and to continue dialogues about how to best serve the many diverse student populations in CLAS. Taking the mission beyond CLAS, Franklin and taskforce members hope to bring the intentionality and energy generated by the taskforce to colleges campus-wide. In the meantime, the taskforce has established collaborative relationships with the Center for Faculty Development, Office of Assessment, Office of Undergraduate Experiences and Core Curriculum Oversight Committees, to expand the range of voices raised in debating the future of liberal arts education at CU Denver.  

One of the initiatives that came directly out of lessons learned in Portland is the Making Integrative Learning Ours (MILO) initiative. With hope of expanding beyond CLAS, MILO's action plan states:

Our overall goal is to adopt an integrated university-wide curriculum to enhance student learning that becomes the defining identity of a University of Colorado Denver educational experience. We want the University to adopt the ELOs (in a student-centered language), to make learning goals explicit at all levels, to scaffold curricula, and to demonstrate that students are learning what we say we want them to learn. We want to develop a culture of integrative learning for which everyone takes responsibility and through which students, faculty, and staff are excited about CU Denver education.

The debate about the value of a liberal arts education is not a new one, but it has reached a boiling point. Groups like the Learning Enhancement Taskforce will help to preserve the liberal arts model by working hard to make it applicable to modern-day America and into the future. In 1977, writer and social commentator Wendell Berry wrote in The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, "It could be said that a liberal education has the nature of a bequest, in that it looks upon the student as the potential heir of a cultural birthright, whereas a practical education has the nature of a commodity to be exchanged for position, status, wealth, etc., in the future... But these definitions, based on division and opposition, are too simple. It is easy, accepting the viewpoint of either side, to find fault with the other. But the wrong is on neither side; it is in their division..."

The future knowledge-base of the US and the world will be shaped in no small part by the people asking and answering questions about what and how our students should be learning today. The conundrum for Franklin comes down to what kind of future citizenry he prepares when he educates students, and he believes students don’t have to choose between being marketable and being well rounded. In fact, he feels strongly that in the long term it’s the liberally educated students who will be most successful, as professionals, innovators and human beings.