 Let me welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. I'm really glad to see you all here today We have an incredibly important subject with some excellent guests and I can't wait to dive in. I'm Brian Alexander I'm the creator of the forum. I'm its host your moderator chief cat herder And I'll be guiding you through the next hour of conversation before we dive in Let me just begin by explaining a bit about the forum How it works where it comes from who supports it and what we hope to achieve? So to begin with you should know the forum is a weekly discussion about the future of higher education Every week we have a conversation featuring one or more brilliant guests Each of whom addresses some particular aspect of academia where it's headed and that conversation happens with me But especially and primarily with all of you with dozens if not hundreds of people here And we've been doing this for almost five years now We've covered a wide range of topic with an extraordinary range of guests and over the top over all these years The forum has become I think a terrific spot a kind of pop-up seminar for exploring where colleges and universities are headed What I'd like to do is to welcome this week's guest because we have a really really important book And I want to draw attention to it and I want to begin by joint by welcoming one of the editors We have William Moner who's coming to us from Elon University And William is an assistant professor at communication design greetings wing Greetings, Brian. How are you? I'm great It's great to be joined with guests who are also members of the beard club. So that's yeah That's very very important. Well, I mean, it's it's very rare that we get to interact with our president So thank you for letting us on Well William, there's there's so many things to ask you about your own work Especially, I mean the field of communication is so exciting right now in 2020 Sometimes for good reasons sometimes not but I had a different question to ask you to introduce you to people Looking ahead to this academic year. What are you going to be working on? What what are the big projects and what are the big topics that are going to be soaking up your time and attention? well, I think I think Big part of it is just survival, you know, and I mean that I mean that in terms of you know drawing from last week's discussion with Rebekah a co-editor on this Trying to just do the best that we can given the circumstances that we've been handed so I think one of the things that For better or worse that we're gonna need to work on collectively is What do we do when we find ourselves in situations that have these big conflicts between the institutional priorities? for survival and then the ability to be Be teachers, you know and to do the right thing for our students and for our classes and those things I think I think honestly, I think COVID has put those into a Very clear view as as one of the rifts that we're starting to face and you know down the road, I don't want to pick on anybody Particularly, but you know UNC Chapel Hill was the first to make headlines for needing to reverse course And so I think we're gonna need to deal with the implications in the fallout of that Personally I'm excited to actually get back into the classroom and teach it felt like even when we switched away from In-person classes in March and we sent all the students home It didn't quite feel the same and there was kind of a grieving period So I hope that we're you know as professors in the next couple of months starting to get back to What we know we can do best Well, are you set into the classroom? Is the Elon opening for face-to-face instruction or did you mean that metaphorically? We are open for face-to-face instruction So many of our classes are meeting on In-person We have tents set up around campus. We have a limited Limited spaces for for proper physical distancing and you know to its credit I think Elon did a really Thorough job of preparing for the students coming back to the classroom experience. So So I feel confident And they they were also kind enough to make sure that if you did need accommodations for whatever personal Reasons as faculty that you are able to put those in through a process that kept it sort of You know outside of what might jeopardize you and in any way And be able to request for online only instruction or some other accommodations that would keep you safer Especially if you had health or underlying conditions Understood Among other things among other things and that's that's glad the I'm glad to hear from you as you go through this process Because you give us a great view into that one mode of academic operations and fall of this year On the other hand, I do want to say good luck Thank you. Has anybody asked you to shave for your mask? I've had some I've had some side-eye But no, nobody's nobody's yet asked me to shave. I it was longer during the summer, but I trimmed it back Please above all, please be safe And All best for your students as well. I appreciate you um now we're we're Bringing you here today to talk about liberal education Because you have Contribute to and co-edited this brand new book which we can see just behind your right shoulder beautifully praised Oh, I didn't notice. Oh, that's incredible. How did it happen? And for the rest of you if you'd like something a little bit more kind of Tangible on the bottom left of your screen should be a big fat icon of the book with a click link to To learn more about it and to purchase it From the excellent line at john's hawkins university press in full disclosure my publisher as well So I've got a whole bunch of questions to ask and the book is terrific. It's it's very very rich One thing to ask you is um How did you manage to get The huge range of complexity and variety and diversity that is liberal education Into one book. How did you how did you manage to synthesize and make all of that coherent? Well, I wish I could say that it was That that broad of a scope. Um, I don't I don't I think we just scratched the surface in a lot of ways um, you know first they have to give give a lot of credit to My co-editors philip, uh philt motley who's in attendance and rebecca pope ruark who is um helping to Helping to contribute to the chat that i'm seeing to share where I grew up It's really weird to see like the town that I grew up in a chat window As this is going on but uh when uh when we got together on this We were trying to get a program off the ground called the design thinking studio for social innovation And we tried to we tried to do a lot of things that would kind of break and trouble the the challenges of doing rich immersive and deep, um project-based learning with teams and groups across disciplines and We also didn't want them to focus on grades and we also wanted to add a service learning component and We sort of took this, you know throw everything into the mix that we want to achieve You know the things that come from the aac and you and the high impact practices that are um avowed there and centering on um, we talked a lot in the early concept of our program, which is one of the chapters one of the case studies um about things like student flourishing and you know a lot of the uh professional writing and rhetoric Stuff that's part of this book comes from Rebecca Pope Roark and her Her academic discipline. So it was really A lot of trying to fit everything into this one big giant course and The reason why I mentioned that is because we started to think well, where are the other Examples of this where are the other places where this innovation is happening? Um many times and and I think you know this Brian and and others in the audience many times when we talk about innovation It almost seems like a sleight of hand to talk about technology artificial intelligence and machine learning and platforms and all of those sorts of things and When it comes down to a design is a human process And so what we're trying to do with the book and by highlighting all of the different schools is to show the breadth and depth of What that human process looks like? What are the meetings look like whenever? I saw um chris from northeastern Uh, what were the meetings like whenever they were talking about redesigning their liberal arts core? You know, that's part of the case study. We wanted to hear about that stuff What is um a school like Susquehanna University that doesn't show up on anybody's radar and not to Not to be disparaging, but they're a very tiny school in the middle of central pennsylvania high person from central pennsylvania watching You know, those are the those are the places where innovation still is happening but The structure of the institutions has a lot to do with it We also wanted to talk about some places like for the international university and um George mason Places that you don't think of as traditional liberal arts and liberal Education hotbeds and to see how they're trying to bring those things into the mix too Well, I guess that's and friends I'd like to ask one more question and then I really want to get the heck out of out of your way You all ask your questions and again if you're new to the forum remember the Bottom of the of your screen you're that white strip of the few buttons looking left in for you that question mark or that raised hand and the The reason the recent aspect I began with a sense of a plurality and diversity Is is because you know, we suddenly think of liberal education as a small group of liberal arts colleges that do a certain thing But in reality, it's a it's an it's incredibly complex. And it sounds what you're telling me is that design thinking is a way of letting you get into that complexity and variety And opening up to thinking about liberal education as being well, you you guys cover a lot of institutional ground I mean, we've got Northeastern university. You've got liberal arts colleges like con college and smith. You've got university wisconsin green bay I mean, it seems like you're saying that liberal education can go just about anywhere It should You know, um, we're part of a very long history. It's it's not um It's not 150 years 200 years of institutionalized Higher education in the united states. It's thousands of years, right? and You know our Our coverage of what we talk about with students should not be limited to the the news of the day or the conflicts of the day And I just think that what we Wanted to do with the book was to bring Bring a sensibility to this that yes, we have these um, we have these institutional needs to You know bring stem education into the conversation We have these, um, you know this push to do everything with technology and Really trying to bring those factors into play, but that does not take away any of the Any of the skills and the analytical critical thinking skills They come from the liberal arts art history art history is has never been more relevant than it has been today And I think there's uh, there's room for those discussions if we let those discussions happen And so we need to hear the voices of our humanities and social sciences Folks in in the mix just as strongly and as loudly as the others Who are trying to bring about engineering programs and things like that. Well, that's terrific It makes me think of design as a liberal art. We had a a quick exchange in the chat box I just wanted to read back for everybody because it just it really moved me This is between sarah's hangar goryeo david hul and rebecca colc lork beginning by saying absolutely design is a human process That's from sarah david responds Innovation happens within the relationship between teacher and student And rebecca concludes. Yes, when you allow the students to be partners and agents in education, for instance Which is just beautiful. Um, we have a couple questions that have just come in I want to bring them up on the stage so that we can all see them This is from phil katz at the c i c who says I ask this from ignorance not to read the book How do you define liberal in the book as distinguished from education? Sure Well, I um, I can turn to the uh, the passage in here and and talk about it specifically Um, what we did honestly, we followed the uh, the aac and u definition of liberal education just so Let's that's the american association of colleges and universities a major association devoted to liberal education Yeah, thank you for clarifying that. Um, so we followed that definition, um, which You know and allow me to read it so that we can have it as part of the conversation It's uh defines liberal education Uh as an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity diversity and change It provides students with broad knowledge of the wider world Science culture and society as well as in-depth study in a specific area of interest A liberal education helps students develop a sense of social responsibility as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills such as communication analytical and problem solving skills and a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in real world settings And many of the things that we tried to bring into the book Um have implications for those high impact practices that I mentioned, which is another tenet of what? um, the a the aac and u uh really fosters uh, david scobies in the in the crowd here and You know bringing theory to practice is it's a really huge concern. You know, you have the all of these all of these theories, um, and You have all of the tradition of the liberal arts and we What what makes this um radical and this is the very first thing that we say about our definition of radical too As we're talking about definitions. We're talking about more of a return You know returning to the root of something We're not trying to break things and and and banish things We're trying to get people to focus back on what our core mission is as um as people who practice in the liberal arts and value a liberal education, so um, I I think perhaps that may have answered the question, but If there needs to be clarification, please let me know Well, that's a really good question. Um Thank you, phil phil has his uh historian that works at the council independent colleges and has a way with incredibly incisive And practical questions. Thank you. Thank you phil Uh, david scoby already name checked. Uh, this is that he likes the way that you have the double meaning of radical rooted and transformative um, you a quick question from chris gallagher, um, how did this project influence your Conceptions of the liberal arts and its role in the future of how you're at Very personal question Well, you know, I've um Like from from my individual perspective, you know, I I have been a techie for a good portion of my life I I'm enamored with technology. I love it and um It just seemed more and more that as we work with technology the biggest problems that we have the so-called wicked problems that become the entry points to Questions that we address with the design thinking process Um, which is something that has been adapted by a lot of technology companies is a way to be more productive Um, we viewed it as this could be really valuable for getting people from different disciplines in the room And really talking about those crucial wicked problems because technologists aren't the ones to solve them If technologists could solve social problems, then we wouldn't have so many problems with facebook But here we are You know our social political economic systems all of those are bearing the brunt of what happens whenever we allow for technology to run unfettered and Without also those critical checks Along the way to say hey, maybe we shouldn't do this You know, I think of the um, jeff goldblum in jurassic park every time I say that, you know, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should um so I think that's where I'd like to end That's a good answer and as long as we both of us avoid talking like jeff goldblum will be okay Um, he's also from pittsbury. He's he's oh, that's true. That's true Uh, uh, a bunch of questions of committee including a raised hand from one rebecca pobroke I bring her on stage your co-editor and uh, a few change warm veteran. Hello rebecca Hi everyone. Um, I just wanted to follow up on what william said with brian's question there because for me Initially, and I think that became clear very much later in the book that this was a process that Um, philip bolliam and I we weren't experts in this right? We were not we are not liberal arts experts running around the world And that's what we do We were people who teach in liberal arts institutions at the same institution at the time who were curious because we weren't dissatisfied We're with some things and the things that we valued at our university were still kind of disparate So we wanted to see what would happen if we put them together if we if we did try to break some of those things That we just take for granted the things like semester hours and seat time and semesters in general grades Especially what happens when you start removing that? I mean you can't remove them clearly because you break a lot of systems that don't want to be broken You have to assign students grades eventually. Um, but we were curious about we tried to break a lot of things at once So we were curious about what other institutions and different kinds of institutions. We're playing with Right. Um, we're we're seeing a lot more of this need for 21st century literacies You know, so we were we were looking at how other institutions like ours Are are thinking about that and are practicing that and how they're innovating related to that Um, so for me, and I'm sure for william and philip too, but I'll let them speak to it It was really just an interesting exploration Right. I mean I've taught business communication for example, but the idea of a liberal arts core being in a business school for example Right. I think that was George Mason. That was that was a weird thing for me to think about Um, but you know could really get excited about it once I asked them some questions and have read the case study and things like that so, um, it was fun to come at it not as an expert as someone who's just really curious and wants to Want to kind of open a door and shut some light on what other folks are doing in this way So it was a lot of fun in that sense. Yeah, um, and to to add on to that I mean, uh, the when the call went out We were getting responses from all sorts of different institutions and it was it was really kind of Fascinating to see how many different places the liberal arts were shelling up and how people were thinking about that um, and those early brainstorming sessions about what this book was supposed to be and What it eventually became I mean the book is a what a two-year journey from from start to finish and so early on Our I think our goals were to just you know Get as many perspectives into the mix as possible, right? Well speaking speaking of that, um, and and it's quite it's quite a mix. Um, rebecca. I love how this is such a Again back to radical Rethinking a lot of this we have a bunch of questions that actually turn on this question interdisciplinarity Uh, so let me bring these up. Um, so you can both take a whack at it. Uh, this is one from Uh, sarah san gregorio who asks Tim wise says the idea of STEM is you can't have it without mesh media literacy ethic sociology and history are the universities who have initiatives in this area that you're aware of I should know more of that now that i'm in a technical institution off the top of my head. I'm not sure I have any Um, I can I I do know of one. Um There's a professor at marquette university who has an archive of um, every everything that mark zuckerberg has ever said um publicly about uh, he has the facebook, uh, the facebook files as he calls it And uh, is if you'll as we progress, I'll look up his name. I just want to get his last name right so I can Properly name check him sure, but um But he is there also Curriculum there where um where he has been brought on as the ethicist who is going along with the um the expansion of stem at that institution so I I think any place that is bringing in the question of ethics is grappling with um with that problem. Thank you for the question Oh, it's a great question I think too if you think about a lot of institutions that are not necessarily slacks but are um It liberal arts grounded. I think you see that more right um, elon for example now has a full-time engineering program But that's very much, you know grounded in liberal education as well as what abets looking for in their particular um accreditation models um, I think of places um Like elon university or college the engineering school That's very much grounded in problem-based learning and ethics and things like that as well So and that's kind of that's kind of like one of the new startup kind of colleges, right? I mean, what does that look like? How does that's you know outside of what traditional accreditation looks like? How do you build programs like that? So I think those kinds of places. I know there's some great work being done in michigan state in this area Their wide program is amazing. So I think it's We're really not calling it mesh, but I think it's happening in a lot of different places Even where they're calling it steam, which is a very k12 kind of thing to say but Yeah, I think we just have to kind of look for them because they're definitely there They might just might not be publicizing it as much as they should Yeah, we need to be more of that and I'll I'll try to point the form at more more examples of that The uh, um, michael zimmer. Yes, excellent. Thank you We have and thank you both That was a great question and we have a couple of follow-ups on that This is one from suni dean raj Who asks regarding liberal education and professional education? Is there a real divide? What are some of the best strategies to overcome those silos? And rush started to say something about elan book got cut off by the box But that question's enough to go on for right now. What how do we cross that border? How do we cross those dreams? Do you want to take that? Is this the time to call Philip up to the stage? I mean is that If you're both are going to bail We'll also just drag Philip on the stage and just cover the stage with editors here again Well, I think of all three of us would say they shouldn't be right. They they shouldn't be distinct um that you can't have professional education without citizenship education and and ethics and you know understanding history of what's happened in industry or or community building or politics because that's absolutely going to affect how people are are Participants in a professional culture at some point, you know, kim if we cannot think about it as training and thinking think about it more as preparation An engagement I think that they they aren't separate and they shouldn't be but that's probably a grad school training issue that needs to be addressed Good thinking. I've got a good design good design angle for this as well Let me just welcome phil motley who's looking like what just happened here, you know and start Are you on the elon's campus today yourself? I'm right now under the bus where I was just thrown by my colleague It's a lovely spot under the bus Yes, I am on elon's lovely campus right now. Good. It is lovely. In fact, he's right through that wall. He's on the other side I'm talking you Very very apparently Did you feel do you want to take a whack at that question about about crossing the streams between liberal arts and professional pre-professional? I'll try I'll go back in time to when I was in high school and thinking about going to college and at the time I was very interested in art and ultimately became a fine art major at davidson college but I remember looking at art schools at the time and my parents in their wisdoms Ultimately pushed me towards, you know a more traditional college environment a liberal arts institution like davidson college Where I could study art or other things rather than A very siloed or very specialized type place like an art and design focused institution And I think in the end at least for me that was a wise You know that was wise advice And I think that relative to the question At a place like elan, which I'll use in an example since I know it better than most, you know, I think Professional school education here at elan Can't even if they wanted to can't escape being Art and parcel of the liberal arts core of this institution. It's built into that So if you're an engineering student or a strategic communication student Or a student in the school of business You're still deeply rooted in that liberal arts tradition The liberal arts core of that curriculum. And so I think that ultimately that makes for a more Well-rounded future professional regardless of of where the student ends up going And I think part of it too is Professional schools whose hands are tied by their accrediting agencies for how many credits they can students can take Um, right if you think of the engineering a bet I mean, there's very little slim margins for things that they can take outside of an engine engineering core So there's some work to be done there to be able to really offer that model more broadly for students who are in those kinds of professional programs AACSB in business those kinds of work Well, thank you The the creating agencies is very that's very very important topic and again next month We're really lucky to have the head of one of the creating agencies as a guest so we can put this question to to him Philip thank you. I'm going to keep you all three of you on the stage as long as I can Either before the wheels the bus go around and around and pull you out or if you're from If we need to if someone else wants to join us, um, then I'll I'll boot one again. Um, but Uh, David Hull, I hope this has been answering your question Uh, we have a few others that cut this from a different angle Um, and one from our awesome friend, uh, tom hams coming to us from houston Asks the question a different organizational question How do you characterize the relationship between design for the purposes of teaching? Versus organizational So designed for teaching and learning versus designed for rebuilding an organization Uh, I'll take a first swing at it but For rebecca william and I and our colleague joel hollingsworth in computer science in our Work that we did that's featured in the book in our chapter on the studio for social innovation I think we looked at design as a process in a tool set In which to bring together disparate students from a variety of majors across the institution In a way that would allow them to leverage their strengths and their knowledge and expertise Via the tool set the tool set was a linking or a bridge to those Students who are used to being in a classroom with other business majors or other anthropology majors or sociology majors, etc The design thinking process in the end. I think we realize there's nothing magical, but it's a great um convener and distributor of that knowledge in a way to bring people together Via the process via the tools via design to then go attack a certain Problem for us it was issues in the community that were socially rooted, but it could be organizational or technological or or what have you? That makes a lot of sense I do want to add just a Bit to that too, you know the the question about teaching and learning versus organizational reinvention one of the things that I want to introduce to this is that By doing things that are new and innovative The teachers have to become learners We learned a lot by trying to do something different with With our students and trying to get them different types of skills that would be beneficial to them when they moved on We wanted them to be We wanted them to be more agile As students whenever they went into the workplace and know how to work with each other as teams And that's hard to do in the classroom You know we can't just make it group work and say that we check the box for collaboration Because we know what group work looks like and it's a mess but if if if what we can do is focus on Everybody in the situation becoming learners then that becomes much more important You know I and sometimes I think we lose track of that as faculty that we kind of Dig our heels in and say this is our discipline and this is what we do here and I'm not going to work with these other folks who are trying to change the way we do business At this institution That's dangerous because that leads to siloing and rifts and that sort of stuff right at the moment where we need Better collaboration and communication across those disciplines. So um, so the tension between the teaching and learning Aspects of this versus the organizational reinvention. I do. I mean, you know, we've we've had the benefit I think of being at an institution that has It's small enough where we all get to know each other Uh, but large enough that we can still kind of carve out our own corner and carve out our own identity in certain ways and so When we think about reinvention, I think that's part of why we we had the book, you know, how do you do this at uh at fi you they have tens of thousands of students and they're serving it's a hispanic serving institution And um, and they talk about this in their case study You know, all of the trials and tribulations to make the learning more relevant to the people they're serving and how that builds back into what your institutional reputation is um On the national stage. So I think it works together, but I don't know you have to the the teaching and learning goes first to me And I would just say very very briefly that design thinking itself as a process is just the latest packaging of a very humanistic inquiry process Right. It's you know, it's the latest kind of buzzy word thing. Um, it's probably going out of fashion at this point Um, but but all it is is just it's a humanistic process for developing innovation technology Meeting social needs, right? So it's easier to kind of just port that wherever you need it and call it You what it needed, but it's that iteration piece of it, right? It's human and it's iterative Um, so I think that was that's something important to remember when we think about design Whether it isn't teaching or learning or it isn't kind of institutional reinvent reinvention. Yeah I can see why You guys are the perfect editors for this book. Um, it's just terrific to follow your ideas bouncing Back and forth across all of you. Um We have A few more questions that have come up and and these hit from different angles now So I want to I'll make sure that we bring in all these and this is someone whose name I'm going to try to print us and I will probably mind with please Please forgive me and instruct me how to say it correctly. This is professor Catherine, uh, fellow But now who asks how do you deal with questions of sustainability of such initiatives? In this era of covet challenged budgets If we knew Your first response, you know I Drinking is not a good answer I would say in our case that issue of sustainability arose its Scary head long before covet arrived In the sense that what we were trying to do as rebecca said earlier was we tried to break so many Entrenched structures, maybe one too many. Um That part of our challenge was how do we appeal to students? communicate to students recruit students for something that was outside their normal Vantage point on what their higher education experience would be like At one point we said our our program which was an immersive semester where they Took all of their courses with us packaged in one kind of big course We tried to sell it as study abroad, but you just don't leave campus And then a couple of students told us to stop doing that. That was stupid. So we stopped We were trying to get across the idea that this was similar commitment and a similar sort of immersion But you didn't get on an airplane and go somewhere else um But sustainability was it was tricky for us and maybe for other people because what we were trying to do was a little bit outside the norm There's a lot outside the norm really what we were trying to do and it was also There was a lot of faculty time involved, right? I mean we were getting releases from our departments to do this and you know, where's the line between You know, what's feasible economically and are we meeting our contracts depending on how many students are in that? um in that group so sustainability, I think especially for the stuff that Like ours we probably try to do too much at once We build a capstone kind of without a funnel up to it But I think especially the institutions in the book who have done small things over time and continue to build up Right, it's those those small tweaks until you get to maybe a full program revision or you know a curriculum revision I think those are the things that are going to help you be sustainable Yeah, because you can you can iterate on those and if one piece of it doesn't go well Okay, fine. Let's figure out what happened and what are we going to do next are we going to You know reboot it and try again. Are we going to move in another direction? So the data is always coming in when you're doing Small iterations as opposed to such a big one like we tried to do when the data was kind of dumping us on the head And it was hard to kind of pick what was connected to what? Through the program We had a jump on question about that from From raj who asks when resources are scarce, which alternative metrics may we use beyond enrollments? I mean, I know your book came out before all of this. So I mean, it's kind of I'm just wondering if you could deploy that wonderful design thinking mentality and And say well, we've um We've been working on long-term assessment of what happens So looking at looking at what students are using a couple of years away from a program, you know, it's It's really hard in the moment to Look at and at an experiment like this or like what we did in our chapter And say that, you know, that the the perfect assessment is what people are telling us right after it happened Because they're not seeing from that, you know, that myopic view what the benefits really were to that experience If you talk to them two three years down the road, you're going to see a much different experience. Oh my goodness I use project management skills all the time in my job I I'm forced to collaborate with folks I need to write for the public and those were all things that we wanted to emphasize with our particular experiment But as we pulled the case studies all of those fundamental things the writing and communicating the critical thinking The collaboration those types of things that people were baking into their Either their liberal arts core like connecticut college or northeastern chris gallagher's in the in the crowd here um, you know or You know some of the things that are happening even at the community college level That uh leo lambert discusses in the afterward You know those all of those things are Are places where You know these innovations are taking taking shape and back to the question of resources and alternative metrics I mean sometimes it's just paying attention to the things that are happening and talking like counting them up You know asking your faculty asking your staff. What are you doing? that we can Start to build on you know, and maybe it's a little bit more quality qualitative than quantitative First at first, but then it can shift over. Yeah, roger. That's a that's a wonderful slash of a question Thank you, and I appreciate all of you I'm struggling with it. I'm conscious of time friends, and we have a whole stack of Questions that have come in and I also this is the point in the program where we're trying to nudge things a bit towards the future Um, and we have a nice provocation from another dean Uh, we have all kinds of deans all over the place today, which is great a deanful session This is Matthew DeVall at Washington University in st. Louis with us I've heard that I disagree that the word liberal is so loaded in the public and we should stop using it Thoughts and whether we are putting ourselves in a bunker depending the term I guess a bunker is worse than a You know, we Went round and round on this we really did. Um, I mean we even talked about um We we were calling some of the things we were writing as manifestos and that went away because we were afraid of What that might look like in the in the public eye, too But look liberal at at its core It's about being a free thinking and free Flowing and free moving individual in a society who has the core capability of being a citizen Right, that's what liberal means And it's not capital l liberal. It's not being shouted at by conservatives liberal It's certainly not going to make the marketing materials. And so that's maybe where Pushback is really going to come from we can't just go and lead with we are liberal because then We don't get the types of perspectives that make for a well rounded student body Where people learn how to interact with others. So that's I I have to stop there Because I could go on forever about this but others are welcome to join. Yeah Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons that we we didn't use it interchangeably, but We tried to distinguish between liberal education and liberal arts in a way and we you know, we also tried To use the terminology of 21st century skills Because the 21st century skills that people are saying they want to engender in their students are liberal arts products Right the critical thinking and the community awareness and and all of those things literacy, you know All of those things are Liberal arts or what we do and what we build in the liberal arts And you know, some people who might not respond to liberal are certainly going to respond to skills You know, and that's maybe one potential bridge But that's the decision that we we're going to have to make whether you know Can we change the name of something that's been missed for Melania two thousand years. Well, you know, let's Thank you for asking the question. Um, thank you all for wrestling that I I I would vote for manifestos, but I respect you Well, we brought when we brought the the book to greg britain at hawkins, you know He said, you know, it's nice to see a book that isn't about like That isn't a manifesto for saving the liberal arts anymore because we've done that so many times Sure Reach into the choir, right that this one was different in that sense that here's some here's some stuff that people are doing You know, and they're you know, each chapter or each case study offers Here's some things that you might try or here's some advice that we have Based on this so so it ends up being a little more practical and on the ground maybe then Just to add on to that. Yeah, the chapters have a very specific structure Every writer was asked to provide their radical vision for a liberal education at the top of their chapter and then they could use that chapter to talk about what they're doing at that their institution the The things that went well the things that went poorly the things that failed And then the key takeaways every chapter ends with a list of four or five key takeaways That other institutions like those can try out. So that structure for the case studies, I think really opened up What we what we wanted to be is a conversation right a way for other institutions to see themselves In the chapters that were written But also there are vision chapters at the end of the pluck and so hopefully this segues back into the future side of things for you brian, but The vision chapters are how we use liberal education to confront things that are happening in the 21st century So randy bass has written about the dispositions that we need in In the age of machines and he draws a lot on joseph aeun's work For for that and that's also part of a northeastern's case study But we also have You know peter fount and nancy chick who are writing about slowing down and beating and the depth of encounters with materials That's more important In a lot of ways than trying to move fast and break things, you know, and so So it gives us a lot to consider we have folks who have written about being playful and creative the reacting to the past Is that that group is being talked about by bill? I'll go about bill sullivan Who who wrote a chapter and back to the aac and you ashley finley contributed a chapter on reframing or remapping soft skills as essential skills You know and all of those things that get feminized as soft skills in education. I'm sorry in engineering and technology Really are the essential skills of the jobs that you need to do If you're building user experiences and things like that so I this is great. And by the way, I just want to say that in in the chat stream. We have Conversations now going on entirely in german That we have like the full liberal arts represented here alongside questions about marketing alongside questions about engineering and humanities So we in the future transform. We have a snapshot and a nice example Well, I can start speaking pittsburghese if you prefer to to get some additional cultural All right, um, but I'm conscious of time I would like to see that but I want to bring up a question from my dear friends and hero joellen parker Who knows from the girl education? She asks sustainability raised the question of demand and outcomes Outside of the academy thinks these outcomes are important enough to invest in I'll do that question up again on the screen. Just so this is a debauch I honestly um, we do talk about that in the in the book uh introduction about why um, why we found this to be such a compelling topic And, you know, it goes back to the folks like steve jobs who, you know, had a liberal arts education at his core and other folks who have been influential in technology that Came at it from a different perspective And so I I'll I'll also reference back to talking about mark zuckerberg He went to harvard for a couple of years got his harvard cred but only walked out with tech skills and so I I think I think if we look closely enough and I know that this is probably a question on on top of a question If we look closely enough that the demand and outcomes would become evident but um, I think there's also a part rebecca you might Have something to say about this where? you know four or five years out there are surveys of what employers are looking for in in their employees and time and time again Those surveys come back with they need to be able to write better. They need to be able to communicate across Interdisciplinary teams or outside of their own discipline so those It's again, it's not what's happening in the institution. It's not what we're telling parents You know to get them in the door Of a higher education institution. It's what we're seeing on the other side of it five years out That I think could be more compelling to look at Employers have been saying that for decades and decades and decades It just hasn't seemed to sunk in somehow Randy Bass just made a comment in there that everyone values those skills unless they're tethered to a major Or a career and then they get isolated. Um, so there's some wisdom there Well, you you want someone who has that that leading indicator, um, you know, uh pre-med or industry or astronomy And that's that's the leading the leading aspect of it So well, that's a that's a really good question. It brings to mind NYU prof Scott Galloway's claim that we should be expecting some Huge investments from major major companies in elite higher education Any evidence of that yet, but I would imagine this is the kind of case that we need to make for that kind of support My one of my cats likes Um, this is not an outside investor It's an accreditor. Yeah, well he's checking it out. We want to make sure he's happy and purring More questions coming in and I want to make sure that we get as many of these in as possible. Um, this is one from, um Uh, actually this follows up very nicely. This is from martin tailman Who's the president of global career compass? And martin asks do you foresee the future the value of liberal arts education will be transformed? Will lose value in a post-covid world of work? I think there's possibility for the opposite. Um, It's embedded more deeply when we see how we've dealt with this crisis or not dealt with this crisis Um in ways that someone potentially with a lot more ethics training, right or You know a broader spectrum of humanity might have been able to do something different Um and encourage something different. Um, my hope is that there there's going to be contraction I mean, we know there's going to be contraction Um in a lot of different ways But my hope would be as some of those programs do contract that they get absorbed into other programs, right? I mean just the Refer to george mason again, you know having that humanistic liberal arts core and their business program You know is a very different model But it's going to prepare those business students in a way that someone with just a general business degree probably doesn't have It's going to have more of those sensibilities That employers are demanding but but aren't coming so my hope is that it would it would integrate Yeah Maybe that's unrealistic We missed out on it as far as soliciting from them for for a chapter, but the University of Virginia just recently Reorganized their first couple of years of their campus experience around, um, you know for to borrow randy bassist term dispositions They organized around some three key areas and no matter where you're going or what you're doing on that campus There are different programs that you can move yourself into um and get experience with Uh those bigger questions before you get started and more specialized And you know, I I often wonder what it would be like if we just didn't have majors You know if you could take a portfolio of minors, you know So if I if I came out of school with five minors, would that be more powerful? Then coming out with two majors and a minor, you know what why are we valuing? I took an additional class in this versus You know, I have a wide variety of different things that I can draw from in my toolkit, you know that's so I I think there's a lot of rethinking that might happen in light of covet if I have a nurse Who is well versed in language studies? That's going to be hugely valuable because we know that covet is affecting Disproportionately bi poc Folks in the united states, you know, we are We're facing a crisis there and so language skills are very important To to cut across to uh, hispanic populations like latinx populations, etc Yeah, that's where I think it explodes, you know and gets To be more of an opportunity You've struck a whole series of nerves in the audience the Rebecca just said that she wants to change the words major and minor, which I appreciate Martin Tillman asked for a portfolio of minors. It sounds like a good idea. Um, the only problem with all this is that We're at the last minute of our program And and and I have to figure out how to Among other things wrap this up and not irritate my friend here who doesn't want to leave First of all, first of all, let me ask, um, you know, we have the book There's a link to the book in the bottom left part of the screen so you guys can all find it Let me ask each of you. Um, how can we best keep up with each of you? Rebecca last week you said that you're tweeting like mad And of course you had your agile faculty side And maybe something more come up down the road How can we learn more about you once you get out of the bus? Me You're still here. I don't know Oh god, that's a good question. What what do you want an email address? Well, is that the best way for people to find out about you? Your work Easy Well or the bio that I think you had that I shared with you. Yeah The link to the elon's website information Very good. Thank you. Thank you And uh, William first on the program and in the last half, what's what's the best way to find you and well, um similarly you can um, you can catch up with me on the elon website and i'm um I'm getting my professional uh public face together in the next year or so and so um So look for more from that. But um, yeah, I think the elon link in the bio is is just fine for right now Well, that's excellent. Thank you for your time, right? Oh that you guys did all the work. Thank you all for coming Thank you for this fantastic book And above all thanks to uh, everybody else in the program Who has been just sharing so many thoughts so many questions mostly in english Um, it's it's been a delightful delightful conversation. Thank you. Well, but don't go away We need to tell you just a 30 seconds about what's happening over the next few weeks Uh, first of all, uh, we have a whole bunch of topics coming up again Everything from high flex to accessibility the perfect mess of academia to academic aluminum of color A lot of work coming up in the next few months So again, just head to tiny url.com slash forum fall 2020 for more We also have lots of ways of keeping this conversation going Twitter seems to be the most popular. So just use the hashtag FTE or tweet at me at bryan alexander Um, if you'd like to go into the past again, we have almost five years of programs We have 219 videos actually just go to tiny url.com slash FTF archive and the youtube playlist is there for you Uh, and uh, in the meantime, thank you all again for a fascinating conversation letting us rethink higher education And this great combination of liberal education and design thinking thanks to the editors and contributors to this book Um, and thanks to all of you for all of your thoughts and questions in the meantime Keep thinking about this stuff. Good luck as the fall semester begins above all stay safe And we'll see you all online Bye. Bye spider says goodbye too