What’s more important in higher education: preparing for a profession or attaining a well-rounded liberal arts education? The answer is that in today’s world both are critical. The cost of a higher education is high and the workplace demands not only the capacity for critical thinking associated with liberal arts, but new skills like “design […]
Our discovery of new pathways to healthy living and learning begins in Methuen, Massachusetts, a city with a proud heritage in industrial manufacturing. Today, Methuen – with affordable housing, quality healthcare, an aspiring public school system, and youth athletic activities – is an increasingly attractive gateway from Greater Boston to the south and the White […]
Remember the language lab? That room outfitted with rows of massive carrels, microphones, recorders, and an elevated teacher console? Its usefulness has been contested many times during its nearly 100-year history. Over the past few decades, colleges across the country transformed these language labs into language resource centers, filling large rooms with computers, DVDs, microphones, […]
It is propitious on the 200th anniversary of the birth of beloved American naturalist, Henry David Thoreau, that we reflect on lessons he learned in the woods. He put it this way: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I […]
These days a majority of college students attend institutions in cities, but that wasn’t always the case. Higher education—as it was conceived from the earliest days of the nation—purposely took place in rural areas, far from the immoral influences of fast-growing cities. A university education focused on philosophical discussions and classical literature. The few city-based […]
Amid students cutting textiles, making shoes, firing ceramics and making prints at the Parsons School of Design’s Making Center in midtown Manhattan is a whole wall of 3D printers. The 28,000-square-foot center’s 15 MakerBot printers churn out everything from jewelry and lacey sculptures to small figurines and architectural models. Having all the printers in one […]
The rancorous 2016 election and this year's transition to a new presidential administration makes one thing clear: We are suffering from a national shortage of empathy. The difficulty we seem to have in taking the perspective of another—and then having a thoughtful and respectful dialogue about conflicting views—is fracturing our democracy in ways that are […]
Leaders at Marlboro College hope to increase enrollment by 50 percent. At a university such as Ohio State, this would mean adding the population of a small city along with rows of new residence halls and high-tech classrooms.
The guiding principle for deploying new technology at the University of San Diego is simple: It has to improve the student experience. With that in mind, administrators there have developed an app store featuring apps that go beyond typical functions such as viewing course schedules. Two transaction-based features housed within its umbrella mySDMobile app are […]
"Sophomore," fittingly, is derived from the Greek word meaning wise fool. From finding a major to deciding whether to study abroad—and questioning their identity in and outside of the classroom—it's a time when students settle in at school and begin realizing the decisions they make will impact the rest of their college careers. Traditionally, student […]
