蜜桃传媒鈥檚 Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts hosts its 14th annual conference focusing on how a liberal arts education contributes to contemporary society Feb. 26颅-28. The public is welcome to plenary sessions of 鈥淟iberal Arts and the Social Good.鈥� A complete schedule is available online at . For more information, please call (805) 565颅-6124.
Speakers include Georgia Nugent, former president of Kenyon College, now leading the Council of Independent Colleges鈥� campaign; Anne Colby and Tom Ehrlich, co颅-authors of several books on the importance of liberal education for the professions; Larry Bucciarelli, emeritus professor of engineering at MIT; and Marilyn McEntyre, writer, professor of medical humanities at the UC Berkeley颅-UC San Francisco Joint Medical Program, and Gaede Institute fellow.
鈥淟iberal arts education comes in for a lot of criticism these days,鈥� says Christian Hoeckley, director of the Gaede Institute. 鈥淏ut we consider it irreplaceably valuable to American society. A strong economy, essential as it is, is not the only good thing in a society. Important aspects of our civic life are a real mess, and no other model of higher education explicitly seeks to foster engaged, well-颅informed, and critical political participation. Our cultural life would be badly impoverished without the liberal arts. And a liberal arts education plays a huge role in economic strength and the job market. The skills that business leaders consistently rank as most important are those that a liberal arts education develops. If we let this model of higher education languish, we do so at our peril.鈥�
The Gaede Institute, created in 2001, promotes the continued vitality of the liberal arts tradition in American higher education. In May 2006, 蜜桃传媒 renamed the institute after its founder, former president Stan Gaede.