Quotefix sierra7/23/2023 Whether something has been lost depends on whom you ask. Today, students can choose from more than 900 “gen ed” courses. After Newell left his deanship in 1990 to return to full-time teaching, the Liberal Education Program morphed into the U’s Office of Undergraduate Studies. But the University and its levels of bureaucracy were growing, and some of the U deans wanted to channel funding and control of liberal education classes back to their own departments. Department of Education as one of the 10 undergraduate programs nationwide that were worthy models for reforming liberal arts study. In 1980, the program was named by the U.S. “It felt like an oasis among the silos” of the U’s disparate departments, says David Chapman, a distinguished professor emeritus of geology and geophysics who taught in the Liberal Education Program. So Newell began searching the campus for professors “who had that glint in their eyes.” What he envisioned was an environment in which these passionate teachers would create captivating classes and feel they had a common purpose: “that we’re doing something really, really important, together, and it’s bigger than departmental assignments.” He invited them all over to his house once a month, because he wanted to create a community. University of Utah professor emeritus Jack Newell teaches students in an Honors College course held at the Donna Garff Marriott Honors Residential Scholars Community. That’s the premise behind the term “liberal education,” which of course is not how to become more like Nancy Pelosi but about teaching students, as current U Honors College Dean Sylvia Torti PhD’98 says, to “thrive in ambiguity and complexity.” The new “liberal ed” program required a more focused selection of classes designed specifically to challenge students to become thinkers. He was hired to be dean of students but soon was appointed to a new post, dean of liberal education, charged with revamping the University’s graduation requirements.įor years, undergraduates had been required to take a somewhat random set of “general ed” courses in addition to courses in their majors. When he arrived at the U in 1974, he was 35. Newell is a professor emeritus of education at the University of Utah. But the ultimate goal should be this, he says: to become ethical, effective, and caring citizens, “so we can live in a society where blindly following our chosen ideologies and pursuing our self-interest isn’t good enough.” Too often now, education focuses on amassing credits, beefing up résumés, and getting through college as quickly as possible. But he still holds out for an education that is broader and deeper than that. The buzz in America these days is all about STEM courses (those in science, technology, engineering, math), and Newell doesn’t underestimate the need for skilled workers. It always has been more about listening than lecturing, as students sort through moral quandaries and difficult ideas. “Teaching with your mouth shut” is the way former students have described Newell’s classroom style. She pauses and then realizes why a book about fly-fishing has brought her to tears-because, like the characters in the book, she finds herself face-to-face with the responsibilities and limitations of trying to help another person. “How would you describe the feelings you’re experiencing?” he asks. Some of us fidget in our seats.įinally the woman says, “We’re going through a process in our school district, a pretty major district improvement.” She’s a school administrator in the Salt Lake Valley, and she says she has just come from a meeting with a likeable employee who isn’t performing well. When it’s her turn to speak about her favorite passages, the woman turns to an earmarked page, and then another, starts to speak, then stops. The topic today in Jack Newell’s graduate class in educational leadership is Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, a book that, on the surface, is about fly-fishing. The student arrives late, frazzled and out of breath, and takes a seat around the table.
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