What is university education for? Many answers have been proposed. Somewhere between preparation for citizenship, for adulthood, for employment, for you-name-it, fall the proposals. Dr. Andrew C. Shurtleff accepts that preparation for navigating the Digital Age will require technological maps, while becoming more than a technician requires humanistic guidance using maps influenced/ennobled/enhanced by familiarity with the classics of Western civilization and other advanced cultures.
The use of New Media Technologies to bring education in the humanities to students must be combined with person-to-person elements to be compelling and humane and not alienating. Just as the "maps" in our brains help us to make sense of our world, education in the post-Sputnik era in America has increasingly emphasized science-technology-engineering-mathematics (STEM) maps rather than the literary-artistic-humanistic maps once given students by education in the classics.
Dr. Shurtleff argues for an amalgamation of the two approaches, "STEAM," where "Arts" are incorporated into enriching the STEM technological coursework now dominating our Digital Age. His proposals are made explicit in his vision for modifying Columbia University’s Core Curriculum. His insightful critique and proposals deserve consideration by all those concerned with improving the quality of university education.
— Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph.D., formerly, Associate Professor, Environmental Health Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health
www.andrewcshurtleff.com