This conference goes to the heart of HON 251 Citizen & Self, and Dr. Elizabeth Gish and two of her former students and teaching assistants, Kaitlyn Dickinson and Phil Pearson, will present a paper on the class:
“Useful, Interesting, and Beautiful: When the Old Ways of Teaching Citizenship Won’t Do.”
As Professor Gish is fond of asking, how do we live well together and how do we build bridges to move from where we are to where we want and need to go?
For more context, see these recent posts on engaged learning & research and on teaching students to ask their own questions.
The theme for this year’s meeting, 21st Century Citizens: Building Bridges, Solving Problems, calls our attention to the educational experiences and civic skills needed by today’s college graduates. Citizenship is more than a legal status; all students must be prepared to be active contributors in their communities. However, our institutions are increasingly called on to train students for specific jobs, rather than educating them more broadly with the knowledge, transferable intellectual and practical skills and sense of social responsibility in keeping with liberal arts education – one of the historic missions of U.S. public higher education. As our society grows increasingly complex, students need more than ever the broad preparation required to become informed, engaged citizens.