VOLUME 12, NO. 1 MAY 1998
CENTER FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
BEMIDJI STATE UNIVERSITY, BEMIDJI, MN 56601-2699

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IN THIS ISSUE:

Faculty discussion of Lib Ed experiences
Review of two Spring CPD workshops
Reflections: Kaul, Johnson, and Swenson
Lib Ed reorganized

Radically New Liberal Education

Curriculum Comes to BSU

With the conversion to semesters and implementation of the radically new Bemidji State University Liberal Education Curriculum we decided to ask a number of faculty who regularly teach Liberal Education courses to write about their experiences. The responses were quite wide-ranging and intriguing; we hope they will give you some new perspectives on Liberal Education and how your colleagues perceive it. We also hope it will inspire you to think more deeply about your own experiences in teaching Liberal Education courses, as well as the role of Liberal Education at Bemidji State University.

PATRICK WELLE, Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies

Commitment to the ideals of liberal education draws many of us to teaching at a place like Bemidji State University. There is immense gratification in collaborating with students as they invest in their own growth and development. Learning that succeeds in broadening the mind and the whole person--rather than specialization which is disciplinary, technical or vocational--is a liberating experience.

Learning for learning's sake is a powerful affirmation of the dignity of the human person. We grow when we are provoked to more versatile thinking and problem solving and when we are challenged to contemplate our foundational values. Experiencing the fullness of life at the personal, interpersonal and community levels is facilitated by a good education: both in preparing the learner for a livelihood and in stimulating a life-long engagement of the heart and mind.

ERIC LUND, Associate Professor of Mathematics

Liberal--from Latin "liberalis," meaning "of freedom;" and this from "liber," meaning "free." Presumably the word "library" has the same etymology. I view the liberal arts as those disciplines that help to "free" the searcher/student from the constraints of narrow-mindedness. Simply, they liberate! A person might learn a trade or a profession without ever seeing beyond his/her own immediate concerns and surroundings; but a good liberal arts education will elevate the individual's vantage point, and open the doors to a myriad of other times and places and perspectives. Specific to my own discipline, John Arbuthnot wrote almost 300 years ago, in "On the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning," that "mathematical knowledge adds vigour to the mind, frees it from prejudice, credulity, and superstition." Elsewhere he ascends the heights even further, to proclaim that "The mathematics are the friends of religion, inasmuch they charm the passions...and purge the mind of error and prejudice." Wow. Though it may be dangerous these days to charm the passions on campus too rigorously, I like to think that Mr. Arbuthnot has made some valid points. I also like to think that some of the students around here might someday come to similar realizations, if not within my classroom, at least at some point in their coming years.

PAUL MORTON, Assistant Professor of Instrumental Music

Since my arrival in September of 1995, I have taught numerous liberal education classes. They have included "Intro to Music," "Folk, Jazz, and Rock," and "Music Principles." Most classes have had around 100 enrolled. I have really enjoyed the experience. I feel that these classes broaden the education experience and offer insight into aspects of life other than music. Lecturing for large classes is like a performance. The professor really has to put a great deal of energy into the presentation to "reach" everyone in the room. After a lecture has ended, I enjoy reflecting on the flow of it and look to improve things in the future.

DEANNA EVANS, Professor of English

What I really like about teaching "Lib Ed" courses? I love teaching English Literature I, World Literature II, Understanding Drama. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to introduce students to the great works of literature. In fact, I am passionate about much of the subject matter. I so much want students to like the course. I will do all that I can to present a cultural context for the literature studied, so I am always on the "look out" for slides, books, videos, tapes. I feel happy when I am teaching subject matter that I love.

So what don't I like? I don't like indifferent students, those who come to class every other week and complain because they don't do well on tests. I feel hurt and offended by those students who show indifference and even dislike for something I believe is important and wonderful. Sometimes, by the end of the quarter, I feel "drained" and "used." But usually there are enough good students in the course, so I still feel some sense of satisfaction. But I feel a sense of failure, too, about the ones who don't seem to have learned much.

This all reminds me of the story about the classroom teacher who was tired of those students who appeared indifferent. So one day he wrote the letters A-P-A-T-H-Y on the board. He heard a student whisper, "A Path The. What does that mean?" Then another student whispered back, "Who cares?"

PAT DONNAY, Associate Professor of Political Science

I think liberal education is to demonstrate to students the complexity of the world we live in. Many of us have preconceived notions of the world that enable us to have simple, sometimes intolerant, views of the world and its politics. These unsophisticated views can be either liberal or conservative. My goal in liberal education is to encourage students to realize that our democracy depends upon informed and tolerant citizens and that as university graduates, they are not only trained in how to work, but also have a responsibility to live up to that notion of a democratic citizen.

JULIE E. LARSON, Associate Professor of Chemistry

DNA fingerprinting, human cloning, and space expedition. These are topics that have been high profile in the media. Are you prepared to make rational decisions about these topics? Do they have (or have they) serious consequences if the decision is incorrect? A scientific background is necessary in order to make educated decisions about these topics. One would hope that the college-educated would have the tools to make wise decisions on such subjects. Is that not a role of liberal education?

KAY M. ROBINSON, Professor of Theatre and Speech Communication

The longer I teach, the more committed I am to the tremendous importance of a Liberal Education core for all university and college students. When I was an undergraduate, I didn't even know the phrase, say nothing of what it entailed. Over the years, however, I've come to believe that the Liberal Education core is far more significant to student growth and preparation for productive lives and citizenship than any major course of study (including my own fields of speech communication and theatre).

More than two-thirds of the courses I teach are Lib Ed courses, and I have been carrying that kind of teaching load for many years now. Given the thoughts I expressed in the paragraph above, you may enjoy the irony of the following comment: the Lib Ed courses I teach are by far the hardest, the most frustrating teaching assignments I've ever handled. (And I taught high school freshman English for six years!) I encounter more resistance to the material--students never consider it as important as the courses in the major area of study, of course!--which is frustrating because I know how valuable the course can ultimately be for them. And, in ways that are hard to put into words, I encounter resistance to me as a teacher that I don't experience when teaching our department majors. Having committed myself to a life as a teacher, facing this resistance term after term is naturally very wearing, and I do find myself dreaming of winning the lottery and retiring early. On the other hand, I believe so strongly in the Lib Ed component in students' education that I consider it vital for me and for my students that I keep searching for ways to overcome their resistance.

CHARLIE PARSON, Professor of Geography

I view my liberal education courses as the "last" course any of these students will take in my discipline. It's my last chance to give them knowledge and shape their attitudes by instilling the "stuff" of my course. Consequently the level is generally higher than if I perceived them as being the "introduction." Perhaps because of the intensity that this causes, quite a few students decide to major in our discipline since they don't want it to be their "last." I'm also fairly adamant about vocabulary and its use being the mark of an educated person. Can one conceptualize if one can't verbalize? Certainly, one can't communicate well without mutual use of similar language. A function of liberal education should

be to instill a set of reasonably sophisticated mutually understood language and cause students to want to use it, or indeed to cause them to absolutely need to use it to communicate their thoughts, intentions, and wishes. So long as our graduates still load their sentences with slang such as "like," "sort of thing," and "you know," when precision would clarify their communication, they will not have absorbed a fundamental lesson of liberal education.

NANCY ERICKSON, Interim Dean, College of Arts & Letters

The goal of liberal education should be to broaden a student's understanding of her/himself in the world in terms of history, culture, literature, the arts, and the sciences. Ideally, liberal education courses should cause the student to reflect upon his or her understanding of the world to that point and be able to critically integrate the newly learned information/experiences into what he or she knew before taking the course(s).

I enjoy the encompassing nature inherent in liberal education courses. In some cases, it is the first time students have been asked to think non-linearly, a situation which oftentimes makes them uncomfortable, but, I believe, is necessary for intellectual growth.

The challenge in teaching liberal education courses is to keep the work broad in nature and to balance all of the goals for liberal education when teaching students with varying backgrounds.

Students who study languages, because there has been to date no requirement, are generally enthusiastic about the work and the learning that they undertake. As an advisor, though, I often hear students talk about getting their liberal ed courses "out of the way." I try my best to dissuade them from that line of thought. I think that until we have general agreement among our colleagues on campus about the goals of liberal education, our students will continue to speak in those terms.

I do not wish that Liberal Education would go any place except perhaps closer to the heart of the enterprise that we call education on this campus. Until we get past the notion that liberal education is a tack on... Actually, I wish Liberal Education would "go" to the center of the curriculum where it belongs?!

The greatest strength of liberal education is that it gives a broad grounding to later in-depth study. That is also perhaps its greatest weakness, because when we focus on the aspect of breadth, we lose something in solid content. It is a dilemma which will continue.

My dream class would be one where all the students would be absolutely clear about the advantages to taking such a course. It would be a class where students would be so attracted to the content that I would hardly have time to speak as they clamored over one another to discuss points and ask questions.

LAURIE DESIDERATO, Associate Professor of Psychology

Liberal education has the potential of opening the door to a whole new level of being in the world by exposing students to multiple perspectives. How is the world experienced by a psychologist, a historian, an artist, and a chemist? How do each of these people approach knowledge, truth, and beauty? Learning to think in different disciplines gives life added meaning and connects us more completely to our past, each other, and the world around us. What was black and white takes on a rainbow of possibilities, like Dorothy and Toto stepping into Oz. Complexity becomes manageable and interesting instead of merely overwhelming.

Students tend to get excited when they see parallels across classes -- and it is exciting to experience the same topic from different perspectives. Fundamentally, at its best, liberal education should provide students with an appreciation of how little they know and how exciting it will be to spend the rest of their lives correcting that.

Two CPD Spring Workshops Reviewed

"What are the Humanities"

Because of interest generated by the round table discussion about what a liberally educated student knows and is, the Center for Professional Development and the Liberal Education Committee arranged discussions of the Humanities and the Natural Sciences. The Humanities discussion on April 1 included a wide-ranging group of faculty, staff, and administrators, who explored their own definitions of what the Humanities are and compared notes on the differences and similarities in our definitions. It was intriguing to note how difficult it is for us to arrive at a "firm" definition which covers all that we believe the Humanities entail. What was clear, however, is the sense of the importance of the Humanities in an undergraduate education. We also agreed that the topic had not been exhausted and that we'd like to have more opportunities to convene for discussions about the Humanities and other components in the Liberal Education program.

"What are the Natural Sciences"

This small but animated discussion on April 7 raised some pretty hard issues: why was there only one scientist present? How was it that some of us present had never met in our years at BSU? What needs to be overcome (in terms of geographical boundaries, time scheduling, and good old disciplinarian walls) in order for faculty to hold frank and useful discussions about what we each do and how our different kinds of work intersect in the interests of students?

We agreed on the importance of scientific understanding; all of us had studied at least some science in our own schooling, and knew first-hand the value of that perspective. We did not feel we wanted to define the natural sciences without the input of more scientists, and agreed that since spring is such a busy time of the year professionally we would schedule more discussions of these topics for fall semester. Look forward to them!

Each year the CPD invites the Most Distinguised Teacher to share some of their reflections. In 1997-98 we have expanded this concept to include a retiring faculty member as well as a new faculty member.

Marley Kaul -- Most Distinguished Teacher, 1997

There was one consistent element that sustained me during my 35 plus years of teaching. That element was not faith in the system nor was it my commitment to youth. It certainly was not the salary and it wasn't even my colleagues. It was my work, my passion for painting, that kept me going.

I found that the process of seeing and understanding through painting grounded me in both historical and contemporary issues. My passion for painting has led me through enlightening revelations and it has also taken me to sudden disappointments.

To produce a body of work while maintaining family needs, teaching responsibilities, and community obligations is challenging. For the past 35 years, however, I have maintained a consistent production level that I now feel displays growth and maturity on a high level.

Creating is both rewarding and difficult. The possibility of failure, the disappointment of rejection and critical opinions can all take their toll. One's self-confidence can suffer and this is made more difficult because many times an artist exists in the studio alone. There are the successful experiences also. The exhibits, the ability to solve a visual problem, and the mastering of the craft can lift and sustain one for quite some time. I have found that to be a creative artist demands sacrifice, discipline, and integrity.

To me painting is a 24-hour-a-day activity. It's not something I do when the muse hits me or when it's convenient. As a painter I was working at faculty meetings, during conversations, and while having coffee. I saw color, composition, textures, rhythms, and edges that reminded me of either new works or solutions to works in progress. The character of a face, the way light fell on the coffee cups in a meeting and the wonderful color combinations seen while driving home added to the vision.

Each of us puts pressure on ourselves to fulfill the roles we play. To be an artist demands fresh ideas and currency. To maintain a high level of artistic output requires the making of difficult choices. To continuously produce art while balancing all other activities, one must be a disciplined person. I work best in the morning and many times the light is on in my studio at 6:30 a.m. because my work demands time, concentration, and light. I have developed a work ethic that is not unlike the way my father worked on the farm.

To sharpen my perceptions I draw from observation, placing myself within the atmosphere of the forest, garden, and neighborhood, the subjects of my paintings. When I observe intently for extended periods of time, I begin to put together those relationships I spoke of earlier. I notice the small things, like the bits of fruit and sagging stems in the garden that the frost has touched. What I see reminds me of life's inevitable changes. As I retire from teaching, I have ended a certain part of my life. Now I am seeking the promise of new ventures. I'm looking toward Spring with the hope of reinvesting my energy with the joy of seeing the new growth in both garden and studio.

I believe in the integrity of the craft of painting, both the executed surface and the presentation and because of this I feel that one must encounter art first hand. Experiencing the arts in person adds immeasurably to the richness of life. I'm honored to have been included in museum and private collections and I am proud to call myself an artist. It was an honor to share my time with Bemidji State University.

Jay Johnson -- Reflections of 31 years at BSU

Changes are sometimes big and sometimes small, some take a long time and some things change in a hurry. My tenure at Bemidji State cuts across four decades, and for sure I have witnessed changes in the academic community, the city of Bemidji and nationally.

Bemidji has changed a lot since 1967. When we moved to town it was kind of a dump we thought. Not much existed west of Irvine Avenue all the way to the airport. Before the bypass, they estimated 300 grain trucks went through the town on Bemidji Avenue daily. Then came the mall and the fast food franchises. Our trash was dumped in a huge landfill. Now it is a huge, low mound with pipes sticking out of it out near the hospital. Nothing was recycled except what you found at the dump and brought back home.

They called it Bemidji State College when I came and there were about 80 new faculty that year. The Vietnam War generated a lot of draft dodgers. The late sixties and early seventies were difficult times all around. The race riots and war protests were very disturbing to me. I was a little too old to be a hippie, but did not consider myself a member of the establishment yet I wore a tie.

Imagine a class of students who had fought in Vietnam and others who were avoiding the draft in every way they could.

One of my high school students quit his senior year to join the Marines. "It's something I have to do," he said. I couldn't understand it and Don was back home and buried before his classmates graduated. What a waste, it was always the nicest and best this war seemed to attract.

Art Lee said that in those years he had to break up a terrible fight in Hagg-Sauer just outside his classroom. One girl found out another girl's brother was in Vietnam and referred to him as a "baby-killer." These were terrible times. Harry Bangsberg and other dignitaries were even killed in Vietnam in a helicopter crash. He died in the spring, just before I started here.

I had a student tell about the day he was shot down twice in the war. Another student, it was explained to me, had been in a pile of corpses with a tag on this toe, when a corpsman walked by and said "Hey this guy's not dead!" Today he's a teacher not far from here. I know these guys.

Academic life was quite a lot different also. Students and some faculty smoked in the classrooms, the hallways for sure. The faculty had no union, and when it came to salaries it came down to "you better know the game" if you want a raise. There were huge discrepancies in the salaries of those who worked side by side doing the same work. Many bitter feelings over this framework. It just didn't pass the smell test.

I also wonder how many trips in the station wagons I took with 3 or 4 of my colleagues to the Cities, Mankato, or St. Cloud down through the years to State Meetings. Long, hard, and many times, boring trips -- some on weekends. On the other hand, I recall many trips to national conventions in association with my work. Professional travel money paid my way, and at times my wife or wife and kids would go along. (Family went at their own expense.) I/we have been to Atlantic City, New Orleans, Louisville, San Francisco, Denver, Cincinnati, Dallas, St. Louis, and even Des Moines.

For many years the only students of color on our campus were American Indians. Now it is easy for me to say that I have known students from all over the world. Bemidji State now has a wonderful mix of cultures enrolled. It is a big challenge.

In the last 31 years, I have experienced the death of colleagues, graduates of BSU, and enrolled students. One of our students, years ago, was killed in a car accident on a Friday night, but he walked in to my office on Monday morning! I was sure glad to see him and he explained that the victim was a student with the same name.

It is also disturbing to realize how many people I have known who have taken their own lives down through the years. Maybe as many as 10. I even knew one that was murdered. I think most of these deaths occurred in the last 20 years. It represents, to me, a serious change in the times. Things are not as simple as they used to be, that's for sure.

While teaching here, we have gone to the moon and space travel seems commonplace. The end of the cold war was another big event. Ever since I was a little kid "commies" were a huge threat, what with nuclear war and all. It's sometimes hard to imagine the Russian threat of war is gone. Now it's terrorists! We change from one threat to another, I guess.

One thing that hasn't changed much for me is the association with college kids. I have never had and probably never will have a boring day with these young people. What a satisfying career, when you watch them graduate, become successful and they still stay in touch with their old instructors. This has been a great job, and the future for me will involve family things, travel, outdoor activities of all kinds and to continue building stuff, fixing stuff, and coming up with new things to do with my time. It is going to be an adventure. I've never retired before. I have been very fortunate in my lifetime. I do not assume this will continue, but I am cautiously optimistic.

Meet Dawn Swenson -- Design Technology

My first reaction to Bemidji was, "Wow! This place is green!" Driving up from New Mexico, it was a big deal for me to see so much grass and so many trees. Coming from a brown state to a green state and the transformation from dry and dead to moist and lush was a shock. Now I am told the winters will be even more to get used to.

My name is Dawn Swenson and I am a new Instructor in the Industrial Technology Department, brought in for a one year fixed term teaching assignment in the area of Illustration and 3/D computer graphics. I was asked to comment on my experiences as a new instructor here at Bemidji State University. Hand in hand with being a new instructor at the University, is being new to this State and this region.

My family moved around quite a bit when I was a child, so I am used to packing up my things and learning to adapt to new environments. The job I held before this one was in Alamogordo, New Mexico working for the Air Force as a civilian contractor for Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). I worked as Graphic Illustrator/Artist for the 46th Test Squadron, a division of the Air Force which tests GPS navigation and radar tracking.

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a Professor. I had grown up in the professor's environment with students milling in and out of the house, and our lives. My father raised us with lectures, and it comes naturally for me to dissect information and group things, and make comparisons between the unrelated to understand the abstract in our world. So, getting up in front of a class of complete strangers and talking about the things I find fascinating, feels like home to me.

Here at Bemidji State, there is a week of preparation for faculty and staff, the week before we actually meet the students during which we move from workshop to workshop to workshop learning about the University and the policies we are to work under for the next nine months. I don't remember a lot about this week. I was exhausted from the drive and I felt like a nervous horse waiting for the gate to open and to take a full gallop as soon as the students approach. The entire orientation experience seems to be a blur except for the strong taste of lemonade and doughnuts which lingers in my mouth. I am sorry to say all that, especially since so many people put a great deal of time and effort into our orientation.

Thus far teaching at BSU has been wonderful. The University, administration and fellow faculty have been tremendously supportive both inside and outside of work. They seem to be genuinely concerned with the quality of education for their students and the quality of life for their peers. Many people have gone out of their way to give me a helping hand, a good fishing tip or a solid piece of advice about winter clothing. I enjoy especially, the group lunches our department shares each day at noon, with or without departmental meetings. It's a time when we all gather informally over our packed buffets and I pick up my best Minnesotan dialect, conduct and jokes, and this is where I learned that I haven't lived until I have tasted Lutefisk.

Finally, my students have accepted me wholeheartedly as their new instructor, without much of a struggle. I was worried at first. I was concerned because I was following in the footsteps of a well loved professor, Kermit Anderson. I envisioned students staging formal protests the first time I gave a new assignment or handed back a grade. I was worried that I wasn't going to teach the ideas and cover the information which had been established in this department years before I came around. However, I found over time that my students are eager to learn and this makes all the difference in the world. It isn't as important how I hand the information to them, as long as it does get to them and they are willing to learn it. So, day to day I modify my approaches to fit my student's needs. In this respect, I think of myself as a student as well. The students I have this quarter are teaching me to be a good Instructor, and I in turn, am just another student who is leading them to information they need to graduate and survive in the world of Graphic Technology, a world which can RIF your job and send you hurtling from South to North in less than a week's time.

So, that's why I am here in Bemidji, teaching at Bemidji State University, and working in the Design Technology Department. Still, this all seems a little unreal to me. Most days I drive down the road and I feel like I could turn the next corner and the ground will turn a dusty tan and a cactus will spring into view. I guess it takes a while for the words, far away from home to sink in, especially since I hit the ground running and I haven't had the time to look back. But I am sure as soon as the first snow falls and I am house bound for a couple of days, I will realize that New Mexico is a long way from here. But, I won't mind that so much, not once I buy those "good to twenty below boots", and the wool long winter underwear. This is because I am doing the one thing I love to do more than anything else, and that is to teach.

Liberal Education Reorganized

Under the careful guidance of the Liberal Education committee, faculty participated in a total review of the Liberal Education program. All courses were re-examined for content according to two areas of skills (Areas I and II) and five focus areas (III through VII). Area VII, titled People and the Environment, will be new to the liberal education curriculum starting fall semester.

The mission of the Bemidji State University Liberal Education program is to create an environment whereby students of diverse backgrounds and abilities can acquire the confidence, knowledge, skills, and values necessary for effective and responsible participation in a changing global society. To facilitate this intellectual growth, the faculty are offering 267 separate courses to undergraduate students (see Table 1).

In addition to the area in Liberal Education instructors were asked to indicate which learning objectives their courses were designed to meet in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Environment. Table 2 shows their responses.

Table 2 shows the number of courses within each subject area that will include the learning objectives in their content. For example, of the 102 courses in Humanities, 80 of them will have Awareness and Variety of Works among their objectives to be learned.

Although many course revisions are being finalized during the current spring quarter, all will be available for fall and spring semesters of the coming academic year. A plan to assess the effectiveness of the revised Liberal Education program -- required by North Central Association for University Accreditation -- is also being created during the spring quarter. Several assessment techniques may be used such as computerized pre-post tests, portfolios, and student focus groups.

Table 1. Liberal Education Course Offerings by Area

		Minimum Number Required Courses	Credits	Courses Offered
Area I:	Written and Oral Communication	2	8	*
Area II:	Mathematical Reasoning	1	3	9
Area III:	Focus on the Individual	3	6	80
Area IV:	Focus on the United States	3	6	54
Area V:	Focus on the World	3	6	89
Area VI:	Focus on the Physical and Biological World	2	7	25
Area VII:	Focus on the Environment	1	3	**

* Included in courses offered in Area I are 25 to 30 sections of Freshman English each semester.

** Included in courses offered in Area VII is People and the Environment which will have a general lecture and up to 17 separate subsections.

Table 2: Focus Areas by Learning Objectives for Liberal Educations Courses

Area of Focus	Number of Courses	Total
Humanities Awareness and Variety of Works	80	102
Individual Human Values	94	102
Personal Reaction to Works	61	102
Respond Critically	66	102
Creative or Interpretive Engagement	29	102
Social Sciences Investigate Human Condition	48	55
Examine Social and Psychological Processes	46	55
Use Systems or Theories of Human Behavior	43	55
Develop Alternative Explanations or Solutions	32	55
Environmental Studies Structure and Function	42	50
Patterns and Relationships	32	49
Institutional Arrangements	40	49
Evaluate Critically	39	49
Propose and Assess Alternative Solutions	19	49
Articulate and Defend Actions	7	49

Metamorphosis is published by the Bemidji State University Center for Professional Development to serve as a medium for the exchange of ideas about teaching and higher education and to highlight ongoing and upcoming professional development opportunities at BSU.

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