School To Work Transition Isn’t as Hard as Many Expect. Will Kiser, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Georgia in Athens, isn’t quite ready to graduate yet. An English major, he is now the variety editor for UGA’s student newspaper, the Red & Black. No stranger to the world of work, Kiser has put in time at various internships and taken on several free-lance writing assignments. Even so, he says he still gets a nervous knot in his stomach every time he thinks about leaving college. Kiser says he’s been in a vague state of denial about the reality of graduation, “but now that it’s coming up it’s nerve-wracking.
Kiser’s not alone in his pre-graduation angst. “I was really scared my whole senior year, especially in October when [I realized] that this time next year I’ll either be teaching my own classroom or unemployed — I knew that being unemployed wasn’t a choice,” says Beth Burton, a 1999 UGA graduate, echoing the feelings of many a four-year student. Many students deal with their dread by postponing graduation. What Next? Can the Liberal Arts and Entrepreneurship Work Together? Sequestered far from rough-and-tumble, real-world considerations, often viewed as too theoretical to be useful, a liberal arts education is associated with thinking and contemplation rather than praxis. Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, is almost always situated within the domain of business and involves some type of market exchange, giving it immediate economic significance.
Risky, exciting, and fast paced, entrepreneurship represents not only engagement with the outside world, but also the attempt to change the world according to a particular vision. In his 2007 Newsweek college guide, “Twenty-five Hottest Schools,” education journalist Jay Matthews describes liberal arts offerings as “intellectual” and entrepreneurship courses as “careerist.” The Business Context Entrepreneurship programs are growing at an astonishing pace. Entrepreneurship professors routinely insist that their discipline is distinct from business management and that entrepreneurs are not merely business owners. John M. Eger: ARTStem.
It really doesn't matter what you call it as long as long as the arts and the sciences are not seen as separate things when we talk about reinventing the curriculum. At the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts, located at the University of North Carolina School for the Arts, ARTStem means, "teaching and learning at the intersection of the arts and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) disciplines. " Since 1992 the Institute has looked for "collaborations with other organizations that have potential for significant impact. " And thus the Institute reaches out to the world because the arts are essential ingredients to people everywhere -- their schools, churches, and workplaces. Why? Because the arts are part of the political, social, and economic fabric of our lives. Not surprisingly, the Institute has made a "commitment to leveraging resources in support of K-12 public education...while exploring new directions for learning in and through the arts.
Liz Coleman – Reinvent Liberal Arts Education (Video) | Curriculum Reform Forum. Manifesto | Curriculum Reform Forum.