UMBC is featured in the Baltimore Sun‘s latest education section as a leading university in breaking down barriers traditional in discipline-based liberal arts education. CAHSS Dean Scott Casper highlights UMBC’s strengths in liberal arts and interdisciplinary education in the article and advocates for the value in studying both STEM and liberal arts subjects.
“The two areas of education are inseparable. The skills and knowledge gained through classes in arts and humanities transcends the choice of major,” explains Casper. “Strong liberal arts education is at the core of UMBC, emphasized and valued across all disciplines and embodied in the almost two years of general education requirements. No matter what students major in, they still need to communicate well, write well, and think creatively about the challenges they’ll face in the future.”
Dean Casper also notes that UMBC has changed some of its institutional teaching practices to reflect what students will confront when they enter the workforce after graduation. The emphasis has been placed more on seminar style courses that promote interaction and collaboration as opposed to lecture-based teaching.
“For the rest of their lives, they will not be in large halls listening to someone lecture,” he explains. “We’re more mindful now of how our students learn and how well they learn.”
Read the full article “Ask Margit: Overcoming barriers and bottlenecks in focused-based education” in the Baltimore Sun.
Images: English classroom in UMBC’s Performing Arts & Humanities Building and portrait of Dean Scott Casper. Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
Tags: CAHSS
