Alumni

Experiencing the Liberal Arts

By Steven P. Galovich
Provost and Dean of the Faculty

Jennifer McGuire is a 2002 Lake Forest College graduate. In many ways, her education embodies all that we aspire to do at Lake Forest and illustrates the aspects of a Lake Forest education that are distinctive and even unique. Let me explain.

Jennifer majored in biology and French. In the summer following her first year, she worked as a Richter Scholar in the laboratory of Associate Professor of Biology Karen Kirk, with whom she continued to do research during her remaining three years at the College. Along with Professor Kirk and two other students, Jennifer published two research papers in respected, peer-reviewed scientific journals in the fields of biochemistry and molecular biology.

In addition to her two majors, Jennifer took courses in classics, English, mathematics, philosophy, and politics. She spent the fall of her junior year in France as a part of the College’s Paris Internship Program. Her internship was at SETE, a publisher of journals for the perfume industry and other professional magazines in chemistry. As one might guess, Jennifer speaks French fluently. Since graduation, she has continued to work in Professor Kirk’s laboratory. She will enter graduate school in molecular biology at Columbia University this fall.

Lake Forest College has a noble mission. As a liberal arts college, we introduce students to a breadth of knowledge by having them study a wide range of subjects, and we provide students with basic skills that will serve them throughout their lives.

These characteristics apply to most liberal arts colleges; nonetheless, their significance is worth describing in detail. First, we immerse our students in a range of disciplines so that they will be able to face the myriad topics that they will encounter each day of their lives after college. We also give them the habits of mind, or ways of thinking, necessary to approach these subjects. Thus, for example, we want an art student to have her or his artistic vision enriched by the viewpoints of a political scientist, a sociologist, a chemist, or a computer scientist, and we try to build our curriculum so that this occurs.

As Dean of the Faculty for ten years, I can say that our faculty members do a wonderful job of presenting their subjects to our students and helping them learn how to consider those subjects from various points of view. I am proud of this, and I believe that the general education that we provide our students is one of the most important things that we do.

As our mission promises, in virtually every course we teach what I like to call the liberal arts skills—reading, communication, and critical thinking. Students learn how to read and think about many subjects—poetry, chemistry, and economics, for example—in ways appropriate to each discipline. Writing is heavily emphasized at Lake Forest, and we also increasingly stress oral communication—helping students develop the ability to prepare effective speeches and to be useful contributors to discussions on complicated topics.

The liberal arts skills are supplemented by information literacy—the ability to assess, organize, interpret, and present information gathered from a variety of sources. We also emphasize a skill that is near and dear to my mathematical background, quantitative literacy—the ability to understand, interpret, and analyze topics that involve numbers, graphs, and statistical arguments. These skills combine with our general education curriculum to produce educated graduates and informed citizens.

Most liberal arts colleges would claim to offer a sound general education while stressing the skills of reading, writing, and critical thinking. What does Lake Forest College add that is special?  In a word, it is location, and the advantage that we take of that location.

We began to benefit from our proximity to Chicago more than 30 years ago when, through the leadership of Professors Paul Fischer and Rosemary Hale, we started our internship program. This program challenges students to bridge the gap between the knowledge and skills acquired in the classroom and the realities of the workplace. As a result, thousands of Lake Forest students have faced the challenge of applying what they have learned on campus to the practical exigencies of the particular job assignment. In effect, our internship program allows our students to experience the liberal arts.

At the end of President Eugene Hotchkiss’s term in office, the College began the Chicago Outreach Program, funded by a grant from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation. This program, which provided transportation and logistical support for faculty to take students to Chicago as part of a course, expanded during David Spadafora’s presidency. Through President Schutt’s initiative, the College has obtained grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation totaling $300,000 that have underwritten the creation of more than 20 courses for first-year students with Chicago as their focus. We are now bringing the richness of our ambient city into our courses, and we are doing it on a scale that is matched by few, if any, colleges of our type. 

Nowadays, we in higher education hear many pleas for vocational training. The public wants to be certain that graduates of colleges and universities will be able to find jobs and are immediately qualified and trained for those jobs. The danger is that desire for vocational training can trump the pursuit of a broad liberal education and, in the long run, be harmful to the student. I have complete confidence that our students will find meaningful employment upon graduation. Better yet, I know that once they are in that job and in every job they will hold thereafter, they will use the knowledge and skills they acquired at Lake Forest to perform their work well, to advance in their jobs, and to be responsible citizens of their communities, country, and world.

So that is the Lake Forest College liberal arts education:  traditional yet contemporary, general yet specific, theoretical yet empirical, and international in its vision yet focusing on Chicago. We prepare students for a lifetime of learning while allowing them to experience the significance of their education when they are still in college. The result is someone like Jennifer McGuire, a graduate who has a broad education and a thorough grounding in her major, who is able to connect that education with the outside world, and who is ready for the rest of her life. 

Steven Galovich is professor of mathematics at Lake Forest College. From 1994 to 2004 he was provost and dean of the faculty.