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Summary
Small college professors from across the United States explain why liberal arts institutions remain the gold standard for higher education.
The fevered controversy over America’s educational future isn’t simply academic; those who have proposed sweeping reforms include government officials, politicians, foundation officers, think-tank researchers, journalists, media pundits, and university administrators. Drowned out in that noisy debate are the voices of those who actually teach the liberal arts exclusively to undergraduates in our nation’s small liberal arts colleges, or SLACs. The Best Kind of College attempts to rectify that glaring oversight. As an insiders’ “guide” to the liberal arts in its truest form the volume brings together thirty award-winning professors from across the country to convey in various ways some of the virtues, the electricity, and, overall, the importance of the small-seminar, face-to-face approach to education, as typically featured in SLACs. Before we in the United States abandon or compromise our commitment to the liberal arts—oddly enough, precisely at a time when our global competitors are discovering, emulating, and founding American-style SLACs and new liberal arts programs—we need a wake-up call, namely to the fact that the nation’s SLACs provide a time-tested model of educational integrity and success.
“At last, some good news about education! This collection brings together essays by professors at small liberal arts colleges, voices largely unheard in the debates raging about higher education. It ranges widely through disciplines and across colleges, taking us into classrooms where we see the creative, inventive kinds of teaching that go on when classes are kept small and professors can interact with students. This book is a welcome corrective to claims that higher education is ‘broken’ and in need of a high-tech fix, a quiet reminder that ‘innovation’ goes on as a matter of course at colleges where teaching is top priority and is kept to human scale.” — Gayle Greene, Scripps College
“McWilliams and Seery have achieved something remarkable: they have found a new and interesting way to present the case for the liberal arts model in American education. More than that, they have managed to show the value of, as well as present the argument for, the model. At its best, the book recreates something of the experience of a liberal arts education in microcosm. This is a wonderful, provocative, engaging, and moving book. It is unlikely to be surpassed.” — Simon Stow, author of Republic of Readers? The Literary Turn in Political Thought and Analysis
Susan McWilliams is Associate Professor of Politics at Pomona College and the author of Traveling Back: Toward a Global Political Theory. John E. Seery is George Irving Thompson Memorial Professor of Government and Professor of Politics at Pomona College and the author of America Goes to College: Political Theory for the Liberal Arts.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction Susan McWilliams and John E. Seery, Pomona College
Part One: The Classroom
What’s Love Got to Do with It? Shakespeare: A Liberal Art Martha Andresen, Pomona College
In Defense of Small: Some Personal Reflections on Teaching Chemistry at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution Dasan M. Thamattoor, Colby College
An Invitation to Get Lost: The Right Kind of Place for Liberal Learning Nicholas Buccola, Linfield College
From Observation to Engagement to Collaboration: The Liberal Arts Journey Jerusha B. Detweiler-Bedell, Lewis & Clark College
Magic in the Classroom Arthur T. Benjamin, Harvey Mudd College
Part Two: The Career
Learning to Live a Life of Learnable Moments Justin Crowe, Williams College
(What Is Meant to Be) Straight Talk on Intellectual, Cultural, and Moral Formation Jason Peters, Augustana College
Robert Frost, Symbolical Teacher Robert H. Bell, Williams College
The “Job Definition” of a Faculty Member at a Liberal Arts Institution Elizabeth J. Jensen, Hamilton College
How Liberal Arts Colleges Have Shaped My Life Akila Weerapana, Wellesley College
Part Three: The Curriculum
Liberal Education as Respecting Who We Are Peter Augustine Lawler, Berry College
Humanizing the Subject: Toward a Curriculum for Liberal Education in the Twenty-First Century Jeffrey Freyman, Transylvania University
Singing a New History: Pathways to Learning in a Liberal Arts Setting Steven S. Volk, Oberlin College
Living Art Ruthann Godollei, Macalester College
Social Entrepreneurship and the Liberal Arts Jonathan Isham, Middlebury College
Beyond Cs Getting Degrees: Teaching the Liberal Arts and Sciences at a Comprehensive University Jeffrey A. Becker, University of the Pacific
Part Four: The Community
Unlearning Helplessness: The Liberal Arts and the Future of Education Adam Kotskom, Shimer College
Liberal Arts Colleges: The Mother of (Re)Invention Jay Barth, Hendrix College
The Best Kind of College: Spelman College Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper, Spelman College
Athletics in the Liberal Arts Jennifer Shea Lane, Wesleyan University
Going Elsewhere, Coming Home Yolanda P. Cruz, Oberlin College
On Not Lamenting Our Virginity Jane F. Crosthwaite, Mount Holyoke College
Part Five: The College
Departures K. E. Brashier, Reed College
What Matters Most? Liberal Arts Colleges in Perilous Times John K. Roth, Claremont McKenna College
Importing the American Liberal Arts College? Kristine Mitchell and Cotten Seiler, Dickinson College
Nationalism and the Liberal Arts Will Barndt, Pitzer College
The Liberal Arts and the Pursuit of Wisdom Timothy Baker Shutt, Kenyon College
