Liberal education doesn’t just happen in the humanities. And for that matter, liberal education doesn’t only happen in the classroom. If you work closely with our students on the co-curricular side and have experienced or observed a moment when you felt your program’s mission was truly aligning with liberal education values, then please tell us about it. We invite colleagues from across the disciplines to share examples of the means by which they seek to make liberal education real to their students. It might be a specific assignment, or a class discussion, or the language of a syllabus—where do liberal education values make themselves felt in your interactions with students? Submit your example to Michael Weil (weilmr@uwec.edu) and soon you may see your work featured on this page.
Professor of Philosophy Sean McAleer describes this short writing assignment which he used in his “Contemporary Moral Problems” class; with a little revision, it could be used in many different courses.
We began by reading Cronon’s “Only Connect.” I regularly tried to make connections to it as we went through the semester. At the end of the semester I had a 2-3 page reflection paper on this topic:
Topic. A reflection on your experience of PHIL 120.002 in light of William Cronon’s “‘Only Connect’—The Goals of a Liberal Education.” One of the baccalaureate goals PHIL 120.002 seeks to promote is an understanding of a liberal education. Using Cronon’s view as a starting-point, discuss the way(s)—if any—in which PHIL 120.002 has been relevant to your understanding and experience of a liberal education. I suggest briefly summing up what a liberal education is, then picking a couple of the specific goals or qualities Cronon mentions and discussing the ways in which our readings and discussions have made you aware of and/or helped to promote them—or occasions in which a golden opportunity was missed. Use concrete examples. I hope that reflecting in this way will make what we’re doing here at UWEC—or at least in PHIL 120.002—more transparent to all of us, and enable us to be more intentional about it.
Professor Mike Dorsher of the Department of Communication and Journalism includes the following language in the syllabus for his course “Mass Media Ethics”:
This course will combine practical and theoretical aspects of ethics, in the context of advertising, public relations, journalism and mass media entertainment. We will discuss the implications to the media and to society of successes and failures in dealing with a wide variety of ethical dilemmas.
This course is intended to be a shared learning experience. We all should learn from each other, so in this class, silence is not golden!
Overall, this course is intended to help you think critically about the mass communication media and their roles in modern society. We will attempt to discern differences as well as similarities on ethical issues in such areas as news, entertainment programming on radio and TV, public relations, advertising and online communication. These inquiries are all aimed at helping you understand how and why to make ethical choices regarding the mass media. Ultimately, our goal is to communicate the bases of our ethical choices so effectively that even those who disagree with our decisions respect our sincerity and extend our credibility. Without credibility, we in the media have nothing. We’ll also learn how to be more ethical consumers of the mass media, so this should be a valuable course whether or not you go on to work in advertising, journalism or PR.
