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In talking with those outside the college, I often encounter a misconception about liberal-arts curriculum. The public frequently assumes that the liberal arts and sciences are somehow a static affair. The core was given long ago, perhaps in ancient Greece or Rome, and everything since has been somehow pasted on in the same spirit as the original. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Liberal-arts curricula need to be living, breathing, dynamic things, with boundless potential for imagination and creativity. At Dickinson, one fine example is provided by the very department that typically—or, better, stereotypically—is identified as the flag bearer for the misconception. I refer to classical studies. In the past year, Dickinson’s classicists have joined with faculty in anthropology, art & art history, and geology to create a new major in archaeology. Building on resources made available through the endowment of a faculty chair in the field by the Roberts family, an exciting summer dig at the world-renown site of Mycenea, Greece, and the addition of modern Greek to our offerings, the new concentration already has 14 majors. The program clearly incorporates characteristics that President William G. Durden ’71 has identified as “Distinctively Dickinson”—globalism, interdisciplinary education and engagement in active study through fieldwork. The same can be said, for another example, of our initiative in bioinformatics. At the other end of the “stereotype spectrum” from classics, this new field applies developments from the quintessentially contemporary, fast-moving world of computer technology to the study of biology, especially genes. Supported by a major grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and an endowed chair from Jack ’59 and Inge Stafford ’58, the initiative places Dickinson in the forefront in defining the role of bioinformatics in the undergraduate curriculum. In fact, Dickinson has received a grant from the Mellon Foundation-funded Center for Educational Technology to conduct a symposium on just this question for representatives from America’s leading liberal-arts colleges in the spring. Equally important, we are creating opportunities for exciting student-faculty research in the field. Supported by monies from Pennsylvania’s tobacco settlement fund, Dickinson has joined with Carnegie Mellon University in a project that will involve our students and faculty in research to use bioinformatic tools in the identification of cancer subtypes. Here again, the approach is “Distinctively Dickinson;” it is “useful” in its application of learning and research to challenging contemporary problems and “crossing borders” of the disciplines of biology, computer science and mathematics in dramatic ways. Other examples of the dynamic way in which we interpret the liberal arts and sciences are readily at hand. For instance, the environmental studies department, whose ties with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation are highlighted in this newsletter, has a lengthy history of crossing disciplinary boundaries, active fieldwork and community service—first in Pennsylvania and now in Russia through its ALLARM water-quality monitoring program. Taken in sum, Dickinson’s curriculum
builds on the past but also reinterprets the liberal-arts heritage to
prepare our students for lives of engagement in local, national and global
communities. It is a work in progress, as suits an American Revolutionary
college, founded with the mission of bringing liberal education to the
task of building a new nation.
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