Reimagining the Liberal Arts in Community College Classrooms

by Pamela L. Longo, Adjunct Faculty (English)

Earlier this month, I had the privilege to participate in the annual conference of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), held in Washington, D.C. For the first time in its fifty-year history, Classics was officially recognized as a NeMLA category of inquiry. My panel was one of three that addressed the topic of “Reading and Writing the Classics.” The session was lightly attended, which was to be expected for an 8:30 a.m. Saturday time-slot; however, the four papers presented were all deeply engaging. Papers addressed responses to Classical culture from the medieval period (my point of focus) through the nineteenth century. I was excited to share my theory that adaptations of Classical narrative facilitated cultural criticism in late fourteenth and early fifteenth-century England, and to discover that other eras and regions also utilized the Classics for similarly self-authorizing, critical commentary.

Just as stimulating as the papers, though, was the conversation that followed our presentations. Q and A quickly turned to the sustainability of the Classics in the twenty-first-century academy. Discussion centered on the future of the field—its appeal to students and the role of the Classics in both general education courses and higher education overall.

The issue affects all of us who teach or study the liberal arts. A recent article in The Atlantic suggests that the Great Recession continues to influence undergraduates’ decisions about what to study in college, prompting an increased focus on career training and STEM majors over the humanities. (1) Today’s students remain concerned about the cost-effectiveness of their degrees and the paths that their college careers will open to them beyond graduation—and rightly so. With tuition on the rise, a tightening job market, and uncertainty over how new technologies will shape the economy, students are smart to weigh their options carefully. However, this should not mean that the Classics, or any liberal arts field, has little to offer them. As the panelists at my session concluded of the Classics, we must reimagine how we study the liberal arts in the twenty-first-century, if we are to keep these fields relevant.

Although many four-year liberal arts schools are struggling to craft their relevance narrative, there is good news for us in the community college sector. According to the U.S. Department of Education, Associates Degree completions in the humanities have sustained a steady increase since 1987. Other data out of the American Association of Community Colleges and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center tell a promising story: while 81 percent of community college students have no prior post-secondary school experience, a quarter of all undergraduates begin their college studies at two-year public schools, and 18 percent of students at four-year schools have transferred to or taken classes at two-year schools. (2) For those of who teach courses in the liberal arts, this means that most of our students will encounter our disciplines for the first time when they take our courses. For some of our students, liberal arts gateway courses will be their only experience with constitutive fields. Others may discover an affinity for our fields and continue to study them, informally or at transfer schools, if our courses capture their interests. In other words, faculty in community college humanities programs are the ambassadors of our disciplines.

What’s more, if we must reimagine the role the liberal arts will play in higher education and beyond, then community college faculty must contribute to the conversation, if not take the lead in charting the way forward. At a past meeting of the Community College Humanities Association, I proposed a modular approach to course design that could structure individual courses or whole programs of study. In this approach, what the ancients would have called arts, or interpretive skills, would provide an integrated foundation for humanities courses. The model actually comes from Harvard University’s Humanities Frameworks courses: the Art of Reading, the Art of Listening, and the Art of Looking. These courses examine the conditions that shape each practice and deepen students’ understanding of their own habits. (3) The modules I believe would resonate with community college students include listening, reading, networking, nurturing, and leading. Any one (or more) of these areas could be incorporated into liberal arts courses; they could even bridge the liberal arts and sciences. A nursing course, for example, might address the art of nurturing from the standpoint of praxis; while a composition course could supply reading and writing assignments that evaluate nurturing from multiple perspectives: caregivers, patients, families, and institutions.

In the meantime, whatever fields we teach, if we want our students to get excited about learning in our classrooms, we must share with them what excites us about our fields—why we chose to study what we did, the questions that still motivate us, and the possibilities for the future.

(1) Jeffrey Selingo, “As Humanities Majors Decline, Colleges Try to Hype Up Their Programs,” The Atlantic, November 1, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/colleges-studying-humanities-promotion/574621/.

(2) The data reflects surveys conducted in 2016 and 2015 respectively, but a 2017 update confirms the continued rise of humanities certificates and degrees in community colleges. See American Academy of Arts and Sciences, “Humanities Indicators,” updated May 2017, https://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.aspx?i=10807.

(3) Harvard University, “Course Descriptions,” accessed October 2017, https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-109854.