Assessing Liberal Arts and Place from Multiple Perspectives: Research Findings

City/ Community Leaders Interviews:  Resources from the liberal arts tradition that enliven and enrich city life

Group interviews were conducted with 20 city and community leaders representing all sectors including government, business, education, social services, urban and regional planning, health care, and nonprofit organizations.  The respondents attended colleges and universities all over the country and had vastly different experiences of higher education.  These interviews explored how the liberal arts actually shaped their perspectives and prepared them to become leaders in this place.  Our goal was to determine how community leaders envisioned their own educational experiences as having an impact on their connections to place and how their own education and experience led them to care about their community.  We also explored their views of the contributions liberal arts colleges make to the common good and whether liberal arts colleges are important to the vitality of a city or region.  We wanted to explore how a particular place could influence and shape the way liberal arts faculty teach and do scholarship.  The findings reveal that these community leaders identified their own liberal arts experiences as being influential and as important, if not more so, than technical training in preparing them for their vocational work.   Faculty members were identified as playing a critical role both as resource people for a community and as models for students.  These community leaders identified a role for liberal arts colleges to be strategic partners but admit that they are often overlooked.  See Appendix D for a bulleted summary of key themes uncovered.

Liberal arts education is foundational in preparing leaders for their future vocational work.  Community leaders in these interviews described many strengths of a liberal arts education, even if the liberal arts tradition was not part of their own experience.  Liberal arts colleges draw a diverse set of people and skills to a community and these respondents claimed that liberal arts students tend to be more inquisitive and demonstrate more intellectual curiosity.  Because of their broad background usually liberal arts students develop critical thinking skills—the ability to learn how to learn—and  they often become life-long learners.  One respondent argued that his liberal arts courses prepared him better for his profession than the technical courses he was required to take.

“My degree is criminal justice, but I think my most instructive courses were lit courses. Because I figure anybody can learn the criminal justice system, just get the job and learn it. It’s just a system, it’s a technical thing.  But, but the idea of exploring human motivations and dreams and how conflicts run and why people decide—I mean that’s the realm of literature.  And I always felt that I got much more preparation for my corrections career through my English lit courses than I ever did through my CJ classes.  So that’s one point. And the other point—I mean your questions about the role of liberal arts in, in a broader community, as a broader community resource. I think it’s related to critical thinking which is maybe what we’re starting to talk about.”

Several respondents commented that when they are hiring they give preference to those from a liberal arts background because their ability to see issues from multiple perspectives and to facilitate dialogue on controversial issues can be a huge asset in the work place. One respondent argued that one role of the liberal arts was to help people focus on becoming involved—the issue is less important than the principle of being involved—that’s the transferable skill.

“But I think there’s a different way to look at it, and to me the role is that rather than focusing on the particular issue, what you focus on is the principle of being involved in the issue around you, which is then transferable.”

Some respondents described their own experience as liberal arts students and articulated that the most important learning for them was discovering that ‘You could impact change.’  They described in various ways that their liberal arts education helped them learn how to create social change in a particular place.   Other respondents described the role of experiential education within their college experience as being instrumental in enabling them to gain a vision for how knowledge is connected to action and of how the study of multiple disciplines is beneficial in forming leaders who can both analyze (i.e. view the world from broad perspectives) and take steps to link their knowing with doing.  Other respondents claimed there are advantages that a community receives when students become involved in issues of importance to the place during their student years.

“There’s a payback I think to it, too, to get them as undergraduates involved in the community, learning about community, having the personal experiences, breaking down some stereotypes—It’s a real learning situation for them and I’m sure that can be replicated on and on and on [in other places, too].

City and community leaders in these interviews claimed that faculty members can play a critical role as resource people for a community and as models for students.  Many told stories from their own college or university experiences of particular faculty members’ involvement in projects within their respective communities and of the positive impact they observed. Some described the ‘dramatic turn in the last decade’ of colleges understanding that they are a part of a community and that they have a responsibility to and a role to play within the community.  One elected official in these interviews said, “There’s a good and I think a growing awareness among faculty members of their place and their involvement in the community.” Some respondents compared different colleges and universities in terms of how visible their faculty members were in the larger community, both locally and nationally.Others used strong language to suggest that faculty members can be an important resource to impact a community.

“That’s why when I think about…liberal arts colleges I’m thinking of the phenomenal resources that are there in the faculty…and their potential impact on this community.”

Numerous respondents commented on the mentoring role their own faculty members played in helping them develop a deeper understanding of the need for civic and community involvements.  These city leaders advocated for the key role faculty members play in modeling community engagement for their students. Those who made the most lasting impression were those who connected the theoretical content of the courses they taught to experiences beyond the classroom.

“There were some key professors that I had that were mentors or models for me, that went beyond just teaching in the classroom, clearly sharing their own experience in the community and the field.  But it was those professors who took us out of the classroom, into the community, took us on tours and such…I gravitated to that. I think they were the best models to me.”

“There were a few faculty that I recall… that modeled that type of community engagement… And they used their experience…and translated that into classroom teachings, and encouraged us, or encouraged me at least, to similarly get involved in our community as well, whether it  be in politics or in public administration… And that was very helpful. And so I recall that and how they related their experiences in what they were doing in their work, life and… that was really just interesting to me to see how these things were shaped and within the political context, how they really get developed.  And I took interest in that and … how they got the community engaged in that process and it was enlightening in many ways that what I was perceiving was not an anomaly, but it happens all over the place, and that was helpful to know.”

Some respondents described the struggle that students often have making the transition from being a student to being a professional and still trying to stay involved in the larger community.  One respondent suggested that colleges need to do more to help students learn how to stay connected to the larger community despite the transition from being a student to being a professional.

“I don’t think colleges do a good job of helping students transition into whatever the real world is, you know, into that career and how do you transition from a student into a professional and still figure how to balance—how do I continue to stay connected to my community and make the changes or find my niche or my passion, you know, and stay connected to a community? And I think that’s really where we really lose a lot of people after college, is that we don’t, we don’t do a good job of  helping them transition into a professional career and still staying connected to a community.”

Another topic which emerged during the interviews with community leaders was the role liberal arts colleges do play and could play in the larger community. Liberal arts colleges could be a strategic partner in a community but they are not always recognized as having a contribution to make.

Some respondents suggested that liberal arts colleges are a resource upon which to draw.  In each interview with these city leaders two specific initiatives were mentioned as evidence that liberal arts colleges are involved in active and planned ways in this region—Get the Lead Out, a community collaborative working to address childhood lead poisoning in the county and the Community Sustainability Partnership, a diverse network of community organizations in West Michigan who are working together to restore environmental integrity, improve economic prosperity, and promote social equity.  Both of these initiatives have captured the attention of liberal arts colleges and they are involved in various capacities within these projects.  

“Here locally, the colleges can play and do play a really critical part in their community… You look at Get the Lead Out, some of the great partnerships they’ve had with the colleges and the incredible work they’ve done with our community because of that kind of support.”  

However there was no broad consensus among these community leaders that liberal arts colleges actually are strategic partners in addressing issues of concern for the city and region.  When strategic alliances are being formed to address the critical issues the city is facing, liberal arts colleges are not always thought of as having a contribution to make and they are often not invited to the table.   This suggests that liberal arts colleges may need to make clearer the contributions they could make, whether it is through faculty research, student service-learning or college-wide institutional support. 

“[A liberal arts college is] a resource. It’s on the list that you’d go to. But where do they have strategic alliances that address … the critical issues that face the city’s life and who tends to get pulled around tables…because of what they bring to the situation. I don’t see the colleges, the liberal arts colleges, there as much.”

For colleges and universities to make a genuine contribution, they need to identify their own self-interest in working on a particular issue; otherwise their involvement can be patronizing or charity-driven which prevents a meaningful and reciprocal working relationship from being established.

Part of the conversation in these interviews led to a discussion of whether a college should initiate and provide leadership on particular issues or whether being responsive to requests for support and assistance from city and community leaders is adequate.  Respondents argued with one another and in the end agreed that colleges need to be both responsive when asked to contribute to particular needs but also to take the initiative and provide leadership on some issues.  A number of respondents felt that liberal arts colleges have a particular role to play in the public education system whether it be developing pre-college experiences for urban youth or tutoring or enrichment classes. 

“I do think that the liberal arts colleges locally, they do and they can play an incredible part in strengthening community particularly in areas where’s there’s not a lot of resources. One area I think that colleges do play a role and should play a much larger role is around education especially in an urban area like Grand Rapids. There are kids, so many kids that I work with every single day, who have had terrible experiences academically and not only can they not even imagine themselves going to college, they don’t even know what college begins to look like.  And how do we reach out to kids as they grow up, how do we not only support them, but start to teach them how to think for themselves and give them options. There’s so many opportunities and college can be this wonderful experience and this is what it looks like and how do we demystify it and make it less scary and make it seem attainable and help them academically.”

Another significant strand of the conversations in these interviews was the need for collaboration.   Collaboration is very important but difficult to accomplish. Some respondents suggested that the liberal arts colleges in our city and region are not working together successfully and continue to work in ‘silos.’ However they suggested that collaborative work could make all entities stronger.   Other respondents spoke about collaboration as something they wished the liberal arts colleges would demonstrate for the benefit of the larger society and spoke about collaboration as important in their own work, suggesting that colleges need to help teach this skill to students. 

“I think it’d be very helpful as a demonstration—if these colleges can do it, certainly governments can do it with churches, with businesses and so forth because all these entities that we have, these institutions that we have in our community that have a lot of resource individually—but could be even better collectively.  I think that would be a great outcome of collaborative work with or among the colleges and universities we have here. The other is to teach students as well how to truly form a collaborative partnership, that’s critical because there’s nothing that I’ve done that doesn’t involve that ability. And it’s not about competition so much as it is about partnership.”

These interviews with city and community leaders offer insights for understanding the unique contributions a liberal arts education makes in forming people with a vision for a life of service in a wide variety of sectors and how a focus on place within the liberal arts tradition is not limiting but actually creates an expansive context for the integration of learning and practice.

 

Next: Conclusion