College Parent Central Podcast

#157 - What If The Most Practical Major Is a Life of Meaning

• Vicki Nelson, Lynn Abrahams, Elizabeth Hamblet • Season 7 • Episode 157

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 52:46

“What are you going to do with that?” is a question raised by the parents of many students who declare their primary interest is in the humanities. We wondered the same thing, so we decided to have a conversation with two faculty members who teach in a new college major – Applied Humanities. In this episode, we were joined by Professors Lindsay Illich (Writing) and Robert Smid (Philosophy) to talk about how majoring in Applied Humanities can prepare students for careers, and for a life of meaning. Rob and Lindsay helped us unpack why humanities majors have declined, what families are really anxious about, and why this new approach called Applied Humanities (or another similar name) is gaining momentum.



Thank you for listening!

Welcome To College Parent Central

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the College Parent Central Podcast. Whether your child is just beginning the college admission process or is already in college, this podcast is for you. You'll find food for thought and information about college and about navigating that delicate balance of guidance, involvement, and knowing when to get out of the way. Join your hosts, Vicki Nelson and Lynn Abrahams, as they share support and a celebration of the amazing experience of having a child in college.

SPEAKER_03

Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. This is the place where we talk about the role of parenting through when our kids are in high school, through college, and then through those years of college to the years after. Our role really changes as we move along. My name is Lynn Abrahams, and I uh work with college students, have worked with college students for many years, students who have learning differences. And I've worked with their families as well. But my real qualification is that I'm a mom of two sons who have gone through, in, around, and out of the college world. So I'm here to share that as well. I'm here with my good friend and colleague, Vicki Nelson, and with also some other people, but she will she will introduce that.

SPEAKER_02

Well, we'll start with me. Um I'm Vicki Nelson, and I am the co-host of this podcast, and I am uh a faculty member and I teach communication. Um, a lot of first-year students, so I I work with college students all the time. Uh, but like Lynn, my probably even more important uh qualification is that I am the mom of three daughters. Lynn has the boys, I have the girls. Uh, and they have all gone to college and they've all come out the other side, and we are all here still to tell the story. So we've survived survived that. And we are here with a couple of guests today, and we're very excited because they are um they have a lot to share with us, but they also are colleagues from uh our college. So um, so they're people we know, and that's always kind of fun. Uh, and we'll hear a little bit about them. I'm

Meet The Hosts And Guests

SPEAKER_02

going to ask them, we're going to talk about um a new major that uh that our college has just introduced, but is an up-and-coming uh sort of area. So it's something I think that a lot of students and parents are going to be hearing more about. So I'm going to let our guests introduce themselves. Lindsay, you want to go first? Sure.

SPEAKER_05

Um, my name is Lindsay Illick. I'm the director of the writing program at Curry College. Um, and I'm also a writer. Um, uh I'm a poet. Um, I'm writing a novel right now. Um, and I also have a book that was written for um high school teachers of English who were wanting to incorporate contemporary poetry, which is very intimidating for some people, even English teachers, even high school English teachers. Um, so thanks for having me.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Rob?

SPEAKER_00

Uh yeah, I'm Robert Smid. I teach uh philosophy and religious studies here at the college. And I should probably also add, I'm in the midst of exactly what this podcast talks about. I've got one daughter in college, so we've been through the transition once, and daughter number two is right in the thick of starting to look at colleges. She's a junior in high school now. So I'm surprised at how different the experience can be for two kids that grew up together. So I can only imagine what it is, you know, for all different kinds of families looking at this process. So thanks from all of us to the two of you for doing this podcast.

SPEAKER_02

Well, you know, we started this podcast, and well, we I started the website um 17 years ago, and the podcast's been around for seven, but we started um because we had kids headed to college and we were overwhelmed by the process. And we said, we work in higher ed, and we're still overwhelmed by the process. What must it be like for people who don't? So we hope that um that you know that we're helping helping people navigate this journey just a little bit, as we have all lived and are living it. So we want to start with some basics. We're talking about something called applied humanities. And so I think the the to start to borrow from the sound of music, let's start at the very beginning um and maybe ask, what do we mean by the humanities?

SPEAKER_00

Thanks. And and that's a great question. One of the really difficult things about developing an applied humanities course is people feel as though they're they understand what the two words mean somewhat. Uh but if you ask people what the humanities are in general, just speaking from working with students about this, you get a lot of blank stares. Right. Uh they tend to be familiar with the disciplines that make it up because they've done some of this in in high school, right? So it includes things like history or literature or philosophy or religious studies, just to name a few, right? But what humanities does is it ties all those together

What The Humanities Actually Study

SPEAKER_00

as as if to say that they're after something that's overlapping enough that the the umbrella term makes some sense, right? So to answer your question more directly, I describe the humanities as a whole of really the study of what it is to be human. And what I mean by that is the study of how we create meaning, value, purpose in our lives, and how in doing that, we're really just the latest iteration of a whole history of human beings doing that. Right. So the disciplines that I mentioned before are really different ways of doing this that that take that meaning making as central. And we'll probably get a chance to talk quite a bit about narrative, which is one of the key ways that human beings do this. Um but all those disciplines end up eventually overlapping with each other, at least at their fringes, and have enough coherence together in that pursuit. That that term humanities, I think, is ultimately helpful in understanding what we're after in all those different ways.

SPEAKER_02

You know, as you describe it, they sound the humanities as as a whole, it sounds so essential to who we are as people and to understanding and all of that. Um but uh a lot of the surveys and studies and information that we've seen out there have told us that that uh enrollment in the humanities and interest in the humanities in terms of majors and for college students just really seems to have declined in the last uh several years. Any any thoughts about where that comes from?

SPEAKER_05

I'll take this one.

SPEAKER_02

Um anybody want to pick up on that?

SPEAKER_05

Sure, sure. You know, at our college, as you know, uh the fall is the time when a lot of families are visiting our campus and they come and talk to us. Um, when I talk with parents at those open houses, I've noticed over the years that more and more of them want to talk about viability in the marketplace and getting jobs, and they're um concerned, obviously, for getting um a kind of value for the money, right? That they want this sense of security, like all of us, and I have a senior in high school too, so we're uh Rob and I are on that same path right now, thinking about um what their lives are gonna be like afterwards. They want their children to have security um out of college. Um, you know, as more people have access to higher

Why Humanities Majors Are Declining

SPEAKER_05

ed, and I'm thinking generally like post-World War II, the GI Bill, as more and more people um came to college, started um doing this, um it really changed in its purpose and function in good ways and in bad ways. I mean, depending on who you talk to. Um, but this idea or notion of university higher ed having this function of preparing you for the workplace is now central for better or worse. We could talk about, you know, we're co-opting a neoliberal, um, you know, purpose for higher ed, which is not how it was originally conceived. But I think that that's where this is coming from. Um, not being able to pin down this direct correlation in fields of humanities to what you're what this prepares you for specifically is, oh, I'm gonna borrow from Smid. Um, we would say that it's not a bug, it's a feature, but it means that there's some risk involved, right? Because you're not majoring in computer engineering and then getting a computer engineering job. Um, you you can do a lot of things um with a humanities degree. Um as an undergraduate, I didn't see myself, I didn't know anybody who was like a writer, quote unquote, you know. I thought I was gonna go to law school and I majored in English because I was told that was gonna prepare me for the LSAT. I needed to be a great writer. Um, and then I went and fell in love with books and writing and things like that. Um there, I for a lot of professors, um, there's like I have a few touchstone quotes that I just have memorized, and they like, if you're in any of my classes, you're gonna hear those. Um, one is Aristotle's definition of rhetoric, the ability in each particular case to recognize the available means of persuasion. That I think when we're thinking about it's a it's a skill, it's an ability, it's a faculty. When I think about humanities, um this is specific to English, but I think it captures kind of the project or endeavor of the humanities that helps us think about this application issue. It's a quote by Matthew Arnold, who was a Victorianist. He wrote about criticism. And there's this essay he wrote in 1864 called The Function of Criticism in the Present Time. But it has this quote that's a touchstone for me when I think about what are we up to? Like, what are we doing? Um, and it's the disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world. And when I unpack that, it speaks to so many levels, to so many things that the humanities provide. Um, you're talking about a value judgment. What is the best that's thought in the world? You're thinking about endeavor being a project. You're thinking about the present tense, the best that is. So it's an ongoing project. Um, what is known and thought in the world, this is about who we are as humans, what we value. And like when I think of those, when I think of what humanities does, that that is like the thing, right? Well, your question was about the decline of the humanities. But I don't, you know, I think those kinds of like crises, the crisis of the humanities, um, those are like great fodder for think pieces. Right. But I don't know that we're are we ever done with those questions? I don't think so. I think when we were developing uh an applied humanities major, and you should know this goes by different things at different colleges and universities, and and we even grappled with what do we call it? Some people call this public humanities, this applied humanities. It's this idea that the humanities can be leveraged to solve real problems in the world. Um, and that can be in um in public service, that could be in government, that could be in nonprofit, that could be in teaching situations, that could be preparing you for graduate school in your field, that could be um going into corporate America. There was a time when something like 80% of CEOs had liberal arts degrees. You know, I don't know how true that is anymore. It once wasn't it.

SPEAKER_03

Um so the the term applied humanities is fairly new. You know, I remember when my kids were looking at colleges, that is not a term that came up. Um why why do you think it's coming up now? What um you know, what's pushing this forward?

SPEAKER_02

Um what made you need what made you decide to create this matrix?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00

Let me take a stab at this. Um it's in part a local context thing, but it's also a broader thing. I know that on one of your previous episodes, you had the president of the college on to talk about the job guarantee. And that's something of our local environment where it's it's front and center for the mission of the college here to graduate, educate, and graduate students that are career ready.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And a large part of that is making sure that they have all the resources to make sure that they, you know, know how to interview and know how to develop a resume and so forth. But on our end of things within the classroom, it's also about uh helping them know what skills that they have so that they can communicate them, that they can leverage them,

What Applied Humanities Adds

SPEAKER_00

that they can market them, that they can, as it were, apply them, right? So, what this is, is it's really an attempt to take the kinds of things that we've been doing in the humanities, right? The skill set is there, and to make it more explicit, to give students more practice in applying it, and to make more, to make them more aware that they have something to offer based on their experience there. I'll give you an example of what I mean. Um, if you think about how narrative works, right? Um in a more traditional humanities program that doesn't uh that isn't leaning into the applied aspect of it, it would be entirely possible to discover a love of literature, right, that that Lindsay had talked about before, but then to never get past that. And at that point, you may then graduate knowing that you love literature and knowing a lot about the literature that you love, but not having any kind of language to bring with you into the job market that says, Because of this, I have these things to offer. And so in developing an applied humanities course, what we're trying to do is to take those skills. There's still fundamental skills in knowing how narrative works, what makes for good, or we talked about value and meaning, what makes for good narrative is an open question, right? But it's not arbitrary. And to take those skills and to learn to see narratives in the world around you. So what we see are our students within our program being able to do is find points of community engagement where they work with local communities in their narratives, right? Which is to say, what is your narrative? Where does it show up? Are you heard? And we talk a lot about whether or not people are heard as though all we need to do is to make sure that somebody is listening in some place. But that misses the power dynamics of narratives, right? And if you want to enter into that power dynamic, a large part of that is being able to not only know your narrative when you have it, but to work on the rhetorical aspects of it to make it land better with the communities around you. That's how you enter into that broader space. So I can see that, you know, in something that people might be more ready to say is a humanities application, working with local communities to archive their experiences to make sure that that's preserved and preserved in a way that captures the meaning of their history. But I can also see it in boardrooms when you ask the question, what is this company? What is their narrative? Who are they relative to their community? And to be able to leverage that and to uh provide a compelling narrative on that company's behalf is very different than simply running a company in a community.

SPEAKER_03

So you're taking these these um humanities, you're taking these these ideas and in a very concrete way applying them to businesses or to you know people who are doing work outside of the college. Absolutely. I love it.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. I'll I'll I'll give one example. I'm I'm really glad that you were even talking about narrative and just from fiction, you know, when we learn about the um how authors leverage the stakes of a story, like we need to know what the stakes are. Is someone gonna die? Is someone going to, you know, get the promotion? What is going on here? When you let's take that boardroom example. Um if you don't introduce this element of the stakes of what is going on here, you're missing out on an opportunity for people to understand what the impact of that issue is gonna be. Um I I just watched Project Hail Mary with my with my son, who loves that kind of thing. And powerful storytelling has as at its center a highlighting of what the stakes, if we don't solve this problem, the sun is going to go dim and we will all die. And that is the basis of now, let me tell you this story, and you're invested because the stakes are so high.

SPEAKER_03

You know, in preparing for this interview, I was reading an article in higher ed about a professor who taught a course called um fiction for specific purposes, you know, specifically using literature um, you know, to apply. That touched my heart because I when I went to college many years ago, I started out as a literature major because that was my love. But then I sort of shifted into psychology and things that I thought I could do as a job. But the this is like connecting the two as really interesting stuff.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, the the approach to business and technical communications now has at its center storytelling. Yeah, storytelling.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, I the idea of being able to um uh uh to apply uh these things that um that we that we that some of us love. I was also a literature major, um and I became a teacher because that was the only thing I thought I could do with literature. So um, you know, one of the one of the things I read was um from someone in the business world who who said the superpowers of the future emanate from the humanities, which is really such a strong statement. I and you've talked a lot about but both of you have talked about narrative and and and telling the story. What other what other uh what what are the other some of the other superpowers that the humanities are going to give students that they're gonna be able to you know formulate the future? Good question, Vicky.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I like it.

SPEAKER_02

Um yeah, but can you answer it?

SPEAKER_00

Well, let's try this on other sides. Um, I've been thinking a lot as we've been developing this program about how this would change how we teach our ethics class, for example. Right. And I think more often than not, when students sign up for an ethics class, they're signing up because this will help them figure out what's the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_02

Or they need a work.

SPEAKER_00

Or maybe, yeah, you know, it maybe it'll look good on the resume because then maybe they're better people because they've had this class. Not a real clear sense of what we do in ethics. And so when you go through the first couple weeks of class, you basically blow the doors off and say the reason why there's ethics is because the rationales that we have for deciding among conflicting options are not very good. This is the best that we have. So get into the mud with us and start working this stuff through. And then they often get frustrated because they're like, it's all gray, it's all just opinion and so forth. And you spend the rest of the semester sort of trying to work with them to help help them develop the tools to join the conversation at the level that our our broader civilization is is hopefully having it, right? Now it's possible to leave that. Without the supplied angle, with the idea that, oh, well, philosophers, they just like to argue. So if you like to argue, then you can go in that class and you can look at these hypothetical situations and you can try and figure out what's the right thing. Um, or you know, if you care about doing the right thing, then maybe that's the class for you. But if you don't really care about what somebody else thinks you should do and you just do you, as some of my students say, um you don't need the class, right? What an applied focus does for a class like that is points students towards the direct applications. Anytime a company, for example, is making a decision about how it's going to impact its local community, it needs to defend those claims. Now, sometimes it simply doesn't, and it does it in terms of raw power. That's a choice, but that'll be brought into another conversation that again will have ethics at its root. Is this the way that we should be doing things? Which is really a conversation about what we think the collective good is there. We're negotiating socially how we want our world to be. And to me, that's that's the real core of what ethics is. And there you get to see it in its sort of natural habitat as it's going on. So the goal there is to start uh letting students see that what they're talking about in a theoretical way within the classroom actually has concrete effects in the ways that we go about shaping our world. It's not just a if you want to be able to speak more clearly your truth, take this class. That's good, that's valuable. I wouldn't want to discount that. But it's also a function of if you want to have a hand in shaping the world that you have, these are the tools that you need. And the more you can show that you have those tools, the more you can demonstrate that you have something to offer in those public spheres.

SPEAKER_03

You know, it occurs to me that as less students are applying it to humanities and and and very specifically trying to be trained for a job, this is exactly what's missing, what you're talking about. You know, this this is the missing piece. Um, so it makes sense to me that more and more colleges are starting to offer this. Um, you know, I'm curious to know, um, like Rob, you're teaching a class in this. What are students' response to the idea of applying humanities?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so this is our first time teaching that introductory course. So it's a little bit of learn as you go. You came in with, you know, you come in with great ideas and then you start seeing what works and you adapt from there. So it's it's been a journey. But the things that I think have had the most impact on students in that course so far are in areas that you might not expect. Uh, we talked, for example, a lot about the process of curation and archiving. And at first glance, you might think, well, those are very rarefied fields. Probably not many, if any of our students are planning to go into curation or archiving as their uh intended career path, right? But that's not really why we cover it in the

Curation And Power In Daily Life

SPEAKER_00

course. It's instead a way of helping students to see the world around them as being fundamentally shaped by those practices in ways that impact them. So I'll give you a couple of examples. Uh, when we talked about curation, we had a chance to look at several different art exhibits where the focus was not on the artwork itself or the creation of that art, right? There you start to get into a little bit of a different realm. We looked at it from the perspective of how is the art presented? What does that presentation tell us about what the assumptions are, about what the art is, what its value is, who it's meant for? You know, so students got to ask questions like when I read the little plinth, the little information packet beneath the work of art, how much information does it include? And how much is it not saying? What is it assuming about the kind of people that read that? Where is the artwork placed? Is it out of the way, which means it's really only for people who already know that it's there, who already take time out of their schedule to go and see it? Or is it something that's actually meant for the broader public? So we did this both on Curry's campus, and we also went down to the Museum of Fine Arts to see the differences in how curation is approached there, with pretty significant differences, and students were able to pick up on this. This question about why do we have art at all? What is it supposed to be doing? Who is it supposed to be accessible to and what are we doing to make it accessible? Right? So you get to start talking about things like is the art there because it's pretty or is it there because it's challenging? Does good art make you feel happy or uncomfortable? Questions that normally I think maybe for a student coming into college, there may be art around, but that's just sort of decoration. Right? And we're trying to shift the way that they see the art that's around them as a reflection of what their context values. And a lot of times the answers were uncomfortable answers. And that opens the door then to okay, if you know, as as Lindsay talked about before, if this reflects a lot of neoliberalism, where it's only valuable if somebody will pay you money to own it. If that's the underlying value of what determines where our art is, you gotta wonder how else you're being valued as a person, what your commitments matter, and you get to do the whole cascading process with them. So some little thing like finding a piece of art and thinking about how it's placed opens up all these doors to what are your possibilities, where can you see power dynamics in the world around you, and what can you do to help make that world a little bit more the way that you think that it probably should be.

SPEAKER_02

And you know, it would make if I could take my kids back and send them back to college, I think I'd be, you know, encouraging them to look into something like this because of the um the appreciation, the growth, the understanding that that's happening for them. I want to take it sort of, okay, now they're seniors and and going out into the world. Um, and you, you know, you've both talked about narrative and story. And one of the things I so often talk to students about is telling their the their transcript story that that when they have an interview, when they're when they're talking to someone in that way, what's the story that their transcript tells? And sometimes it's, you know, I I I failed three classes in my first year, and here's what I learned from that, and here's where I grew. So it's it's how can I how can I take all of these wonderful things that I've learned, and it doesn't matter what your major is, um, and talk to someone about what I'm going to be able to do for them. You know, here's the story of what I've learned, and here's how I can apply it. Um any thoughts about how students can take this and put it out there so that someone else will understand the value?

SPEAKER_05

I think you're speaking to something that uh we recognize as humanists, and it has to do with telling our the story of who we are, the story of your life. Who am I? Who do I want to be? Um, when we're using our voices in that way and telling our own stories, it's very magical because we are telling a story that we are becoming. It's sort of like we're setting a pin at where the story's

Turning Your Transcript Into A Story

SPEAKER_05

going, and we're going toward that thing. So um this is something we ask students to do when we ask them to reflect on what they're learning, on how they see themselves applying it. And this starts, this starts in the first year, and it's something that happens, it should be happening in every class. So that by the time a student is in their senior year, I think they're they have a very strong sense of what that, who am I, what is the story of my transcript, but more broadly, the story of myself. Um, what is my identity? What is my place in this world? And I think, you know, these are the questions at the heart of the humanities that people might find very abstract. Um, but there's a place for those questions, even in applied humanities, where we're saying there's a value for these things, a direct application that you will find um invaluable in your professional life. But like don't sleep on, as my students say, like, don't sleep on the fact that these are also tools that help you have a good life and have good relationships. Um, so that did I, Rob, you wanna, I feel like this is a good place for you to weigh into. Because I start talking, I start answering the question, and then I'm like, oh wait, I gotta go on to this other thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, some of this is is a question about the anxiety of the major. And I think one of the things that we need to bring into this conversation has been the increase in the number of people that have gotten college degrees over the last several decades, right? We talk about contracting um student enrollment now, but this is at the edge, the the back edge of a wave of significantly increased higher education. Um, and you know, I'm thinking back to when when Lindsay had noted that it used to be the case that a uh an overwhelming number of CEOs would have um humanities and liberal arts degrees, right? That's reflective of a different sort of approach to education, where you had a certain elite population that could afford to get higher education, and you could afford to major in classics or uh Italian or or so forth, and you could rely on a uh a network that's outs outside of that to sort of bring you into your your career path. Yeah um, so yeah, you might be able to draw on your your uh your training in college in some sense, but people could also say, like, oh yeah, that's four years for you to like go find yourself and grow up and learn how to do something independently and so forth, right? And the challenge with there being so much more competition in the college educated group now, uh you I think one of the manifestations of that is this real career focus. It's it's super competitive. You can't come out and say, Well, I'm a college college educated person, so of course you should hire me, it'll be great for you. And they're like, Yeah, put your your resume on the pile, right? So I think uh one way to think about what applied humanities is is it's a response to that shift, right? It's it's I think being responsible to that legitimate concern about how we differentiate ourselves. And I think we need to do that. I don't think that there are too many people left who can say, well, just go to college for four years, do what you want, we'll figure it out when you're done. Don't worry about skills, just you know, see in four years. Um economically, with the increasing costs of education, that's not a feasible uh uh approach for most people. Um so we're playing into that. Uh I think in a good way. The only thing that gives me pause is uh the extent to which people may see it as a sort of neoliberal move, where we're trying to effectively economize the humanities. So we'll give this to you, and its sole value will be how you can translate this into money. Yes, you need to have gainful employment. And the commitment of this major is that we're pretty confident that if you do this well, this is exactly what we say about the job guarantee, by the way, that if you do this well, if you work with us to develop those skills, you'll know what those skills are and you can market them, right? I think that's generally true, but I would also want to hold on to the thing that I think we've also been indicating throughout this interview that the kinds of things that you learn to do here are the things that ultimately you will prize most about who you become in that work world, right? That developing meaning and value and purpose is not an ancillary kind of you can do this if you want, or just let it take care of itself and and and go and make money. These things are inherently linked. And when you think about how people change careers, that's another thing. It's a uh I think lying in the background here, um what a college does is not so much prepare people for a career anymore. I'm not sure if it ever did, but I think we were able to hold on to that because people were much more prone to be in one career for their whole working lives. The rate at which people change not just jobs, but also careers, has a lot to do, I think, with what drives them, what they want to do, who they want to be. And so I think if we can arm students not only with transferable, marketable skills, but also a strong skill set in knowing what drives them, when that's changing, and what it means for how they should occupy their time. That's how I think we serve our students best as they make make their way into the job market.

SPEAKER_03

You know, what one of the one of the last questions I had was what how do you present this to parents who are concerned, who are nervous? Um, I think you just answered that question. I'm thinking the same thing. You know, you just said what I as a parent want to hear about this new trend. I mean, this is pretty exciting. Um, is there anything else you want to say to parents to help give them more information about this?

SPEAKER_05

Well, I mean, top of mind right now for parents, for educators, you you you can't open up the chronicle of higher education without seeing AI, right? And so, I mean, I think about um now I think parents, myself included, we're thinking about what is it? What is this is there this value here that's go going to um gonna transcend what's going on with AI? So is there something here that is going to insulate us from the draining of power in that degree, right? And um, you know, we weren't we weren't thinking explicitly about AI when we were putting this degree together, but it was happening in the same timeline, right? And now we're seeing the weaknesses around AI have to do with critical

Career Anxiety And Changing Paths

SPEAKER_05

thinking, ethical thinking, all the ways of thinking that are um at the heart of a major like this. Um, so you know in writing we talk about, or we're trying to as hard as we can to think about the rise of AI as a shift back to thinking about process, which is what we always said it was about anyway. So when I'm thinking about AI, I'm thinking opportunistically about let's get back to the questions at the heart of how do we know things? What do we value? What is this about? What are the power dynamics? And and so if you're worried about AI, um, this is these are the kinds of majors that um are going to be the things that can't be replicated by artificial intelligence. That's fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_02

And you know, I think it thinking that way, what both of you have just all talked about really does uh help parents not be so anxious when their student, yeah. I mean, the applied the applied humanities as a as a major and as a focus is wonderful. But even if the student comes home and says, I want to be a literature major, or I want to major in philosophy, and and the question, well, what are you going to do with that? And I think it if parents really think in terms of what are the the basics that students are are getting from those, it really does help with that kind of automatic nervous energy of well, what do you but you've got to be able to support yourself, you've got to be able to get a job. Um, and I also think about um the possibilities of majors and minors that that students who major in applied humanities but minor perhaps in something a little more I don't want to say practical, but that you know that that we would think of as being marketable or the other way around. The other way around, major in something either way, but the balance of the two things um can be really important. Um and I say, and so I think for me, one of the values I I hope from parents listening to all of this is is to know some questions to ask in the admissions process of do you have this kind of major or how do some of the humanities address some of these things? What what's your what's your school's thought about AI and and and all of those sorts of things really is is something for parents to consider and ask about in the admissions process. And could be that wasn't a question, that was just a whole lot of but it this is exciting. Um yeah, so so uh how if parents hear this, and we hope they do, um, and they say, Oh yeah, that yeah, that's kind of interesting. How can I I I wish I could find out a little more. I mean, this was really helpful. This is a really good introduction to this up-and-coming field. Is there any way? I mean, is it is it just asking questions that parents can learn more?

SPEAKER_00

Well, maybe um maybe we've gone full circle, right? And we we end where we began. Uh, narrative is powerful here. And one way of doing that is to try and broadcast that on things like a uh a college website, right? So look at the programs that your child might be interested in.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And and actually go to those pages and and look at how the colleges that you're looking at frame what it is that they're doing. If you've got a program that has an applied focus in it, they'll be forthcoming about that. That if it's intentional, right? Um, whereas it's it, I'm sure there are plenty of departments that don't have that focus where you might not get all the things that we've been talking about here, or maybe the extra impetus is going to be on your child to make sure that they get that on their own out of the program, right? So I would start by looking at the sites themselves. That's where colleges tell their stories. But I would suggest going the extra step. If you have a child that's interested in the humanities, I would reach out to the faculty in the colleges that you're interested in. Once you've figured out where your child's most interested in going, have them start to reach out and talk to the faculty there. Does this seem like the kind of program they're going to be able to participate in where they're going to be able to have this career focus in mind, where they're going to be able to get out into their community, where they're going to be able to not only develop, but also be able to say what their skills are, to develop that narrative of their own?

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_00

I know, for example, on our page for the Applied Communities page, we've got links there where you can. Connect with faculty teaching in the department, right? Um, and I would highly encourage uh families to do that. Best usually if it comes from the child, because uh child almost adult at that point, right? But that kind of agency to make sure that this is the right fit for them. Um and maybe I'll just add this one little biographical point. Uh I came out with a business degree. Um I was really interested in religious studies, but I had these conversations with my parents multiple times. We love the fact that you love religious studies, learning about all these different religions, and isn't it fascinating what they're doing in this part of the world and that part of the world, and what happens when they grow up and what happens when they die? That's great. But what are you gonna do with that is a question that I got asked a lot, right? And so I came out with a business major. I was prepared to go into accounting. And I'm sure that that's a great path for a lot of people, right? We need good accounts. It's it's not to cast any shade, as they say, on accounting. But I think also part of being a parent of college bound or college in, for lack of a better word, uh, children, is trying to balance that with what drives them. I mean, here I am teaching philosophy and religious studies because I couldn't get it out of my craw.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Now I wish they had programs like this back a few decades ago when I was going through my degree. I would have loved to have been able to be better at not only speaking what I had learned, but being able to think about relevant career paths. Not because I don't like the one that I'm in, but it never hurts to be able to think more broadly about what you can do with this. So I think students are actually in a better position now because of these developments than we were, say, 20, 30 years ago at this point. Right. But you'll only find out by asking. So follow the narratives, is what I would say.

SPEAKER_02

Good advice. Lindsay, you're nodding and nodding and nodding.

SPEAKER_05

Oh well no, I'll I'll add to that to ask questions about the faculty um and their projects, because it it you might find out that there is a faculty member

AI Proof Skills And Parent Questions

SPEAKER_05

who, you know, loves fly fishing and loves insects, and you're gonna study that with them or something like that. Um, we have a faculty member um in writing, um, Kelly Wheeler, who has um this project that grew out of her dissertation, the swastika project, um, about swastika-based hate crimes, where they happened in higher ed, what the responses were. Um, we learned so much in that project about um how to so just think this is total talk about application. What if something happened like that on your campus? What do you do? How do you um help and heal what's go in your community? What is the best course of action? And you have this thing to look at and figure out um how those things happen. Um so I would encourage people to kind of look look at, and that's easy to find. Like most colleges look like Rob was talking about, um, highlight those kinds of um projects that faculty members are involved in. I'd also um have I would ask about things like internships where where there it's a it's a safe way to practice like some of those things. Um and you know, also I'll say like, you know, the thing about um you couldn't stop thinking about that thing, like the religious studies. Um, this kind of applied thinking is even happening happening in PhD programs. They talk about the alt-ac market. That's the alternative to academics. So they're even thinking in um PhD programs in English. When you are about to be on the market, they're even preparing people to think about um careers outside of academe. Whereas before, that was never a thing. You know, you're you're gonna be a professor, you're going to get your PhD, this is your path, you're gonna be a professor, but that is not the case anymore. So I would say, even, you know, to those parents who, you know, have a student, I often see this in my neurodivergent students who have their really deep diving into this one thing, you know, there is a place for expert, expert knowledge that not only in academe, but outside academe. And like, wow, you know, fan the flames on that, you know. That uh we we uh Lynn knows this. That hyper focus, I mean, let's powerful. It's very powerful. And looking back, how many college professors do you think were neurodivergent in that way, you know?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, doctors and lawyers, and yes, good ones.

SPEAKER_02

I I think these are wonderful pieces of advice to leave this with. And I my only hope is that everybody has stayed with us to to to this point to kind of but but I think it it sort of pulls together a lot of a lot of these things. And the idea of uh I mean, there are things that we have talked about for years of encouraging your student to do the investigation. I really was happy, Rob, when you said have your student to not you know mom or dad uh checking things out and um and and following following the you know, following your dream, follow, following, you know, what what you love and finding finding how that works. So um people should expect to hear a lot more, I think, in the in the coming years about um whether it's called applied humanities or whatever else. Um and I think it comes right back to it was you know, Rob wanted to bring us back to where we started, and I I like that in terms of the humanities being about what it means to be human. And um, and and the more that your student can do that, the better. So thank you both, um Lindsay Illich and Rob Smid um for designing this major, along with I know you didn't do it alone. That was a it there was a whole group of people, um, and that that there's a whole nother podcast in that whole idea of things that are um cross-departmental and interdepartmental and collaborative, and more and more of that happening. And sort of leave leave this with a teaser um for parents uh and students if you're in the that admissions process to sort of investigate what kinds of you know, you don't have to be in such a small box anymore, what kinds of cross-departmental things are happening. So thank you so much, and thank you. Thank you. This was great. Thank you for a great conversation. And thanks to everyone who has stayed with us to the end. And so we'll see you next time.