Helping Students Build Their Best Life
Providing a liberal arts education is one of Berea’s core commitments. Even though most students pursue a college degree to get the career they dream of, a liberal arts education is less about training for a particular job, and more about being the best possible version of yourself in whatever job you’re doing. Berea thinks of it as making a more complete citizen. It’s about the nurse who connects with patients beyond “where does it hurt?” It’s about computer programmers who ask important ethical questions about the technology they’ve created. And it’s about the scientist who thinks about things “beyond the bench.” If students focus on making a life, making a living will follow.
Students need all the liberal arts to understand what it means to be human. It is a balance of depth—learning about various academic subjects—and breadth of study—about drilling down into an academic discipline. In liberal arts, students’ coursework is taken from different disciplines while pursuing a major that follows their educational and professional interests.
“The liberal arts is about educating the whole person, thinking about what an informed citizen should be in the world,” said Associate Provost Eileen McKiernan-González. “It’s training beyond a profession. It’s more about the person and expanding a mind that can then delve into other areas.”
Fostering Exploration
A Berea liberal arts education fosters exploration, innovation, rigorous thinking and clear spoken and written communication. Liberal arts education prepares students for many possible professions while inspiring and readying them to confront and responsibly engage with an ever-changing world. The liberal arts, beyond mere vocational training, prepares students for the world as it is and as it will be. It’s one of the reasons virtually every graduate from Berea will say that the College prepared them very well for further education in graduate or professional school.
Adaptability
The world changes quickly, and a liberal arts education enables a person to change with it. The value of a Berea education is that it prepares students for what they don’t expect. The world their parents grew up in and the world they see right now is not the world they will be confronting in five, 10 or 15 years. This ability to adapt, communicate and think about ethical concerns may be why a liberal arts graduate earns more, over time, than graduates from other kinds of vocation-focused or specialized institutions.
Making Connections
Berea’s students make connections from one subject to another. They are curious and reflect on what is personally meaningful to them, nurturing many aspects of themselves. Making that human connection in all professions is an important aspect of not just having a good life, but also being a good member of a business, organization or institution, no matter what direction each student pursues.
“The value of a liberal arts education is that it makes you think about people outside of yourself when you’re doing the work you’re doing,” said Dr. Scott Heggen, computer science associate professor.
Connections are important whether you are a doctor, entrepreneur, engineer or schoolteacher. The liberal arts teaches there is something more to existence than figuring out how to make a living—it’s about also seeing one’s interdependence and interconnectedness with others. Thoughts of human connectedness have practical applications for any profession. The computer scientist, for example, must think beyond the algorithm one creates and ask if they are thinking about people and the world for which they’re creating it.
