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Scot Drysdale <[log in to unmask]>
Thu, 17 Mar 2016 15:13:39 -0400
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For what it is worth, Dartmouth offers a Bachelor of Arts major in Engineering.  To get a B.E. normally takes an additional year.

Scot Drysdale

> On Mar 17, 2016, at 9:04 AM, Douglas Baldwin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> There was some really good discussion about what "liberal arts" means that now seems to have died down, so I'll try to summarize:
> 
> One key idea was that a liberal arts education has broad goals, i.e., it's for a career but also for membership in community, civic life, etc. Another take on breadth, from the perspective of curricula or student experiences, is that a liberal arts program provides room for second majors, minors, and interdisciplinary interests. Within computing programs, breadth is reflected in early exposure to the variety of computing topics and cross-disciplinary connections. What makes something a "liberal arts" program is that it's goals reflect such desires for breadth; "liberal arts" is *not* defined by size of institution or where a program is housed within an institution. All in all, this definition is very close to the one offered in the committee goals and focus statement. 
> 
> So it looks to me like we're pretty comfortable with the idea that the sorts of computing programs we'll focus on are ones that have a central goal of broad education. On lifelong timescales, this means preparing students for their community/civic roles and personal well-being as well as for careers; on course-of-study timescales, this means breadth of computing and its applications, and opportunities for study outside of computing per se. Is this indeed a notion of "liberal arts" that we're willing to use going forward?
> 
> (PS. I also thought it was neat how many of the foregoing liberal arts values appeared in Villanova's College of Engineering mission statement Boots quoted. I sometimes have this heretical idea that there really could be such a thing as a liberal arts engineering program if someone wanted it.)
> 
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