Episode 62: What to Look for in an Arts & Sciences Education

Episode 62

• Episode 62 Transcript

  [EPISODE]

  [0:00:07] BT: In our last couple episodes of College Admissions Insider, we spent time chatting with engineering and management faculty about what students should be looking for in a business or engineering education. But what about all of the majors beyond and in between? You might find diverse disciplines like anthropology, neuroscience, studio art and many more housed together in a College of Arts & Sciences. At some schools, this college may be where the majority of students find themselves studying, discovering and exploring.

  I'm Brooke Thames from Bucknell University. Over the next half hour, we'll hear from faculty from a range of disciplines on what to look for in an arts and sciences education. We'll chat about major and class offerings, research opportunities, career preparation and more. Joining me are three guests from across Bucknell’s own College of Arts & Sciences: Religious Studies Professor John Penniman, Studio Art Professor Eddy Lopez; and Professor Marie Pizzorno, who teaches within the biology, cell biology and biochemistry programs. Welcome to the podcast.

  [0:01:10] MP: Thanks. Great to be here.

  [0:01:12] EL: Thanks so much, Brooke. Great to be here.

  [0:01:15] JP: Thank you.

  [0:01:15] BT: Can we hear a little bit more about each of you and your work at Bucknell?

  [0:01:19] JP: Absolutely. Thanks, Brooke. I'm John Penniman. I'm a professor in the religious studies department here at Bucknell, though my courses are sometimes cross-listed with the classics & ancient Mediterranean studies department, and the women's & gender studies department. This is my eighth year at Bucknell, and I'm currently the interim director of our Humanities Center as well.

  My research focuses on the earliest history of Christianity, and its relationship to Greece, Rome and ancient Judaism. I teach courses specific to that topic — such as on the New Testament or on martyrdom — as well as general courses like one on religion and food, which I'm teaching this semester, and another one on religion, solitude and loneliness, which was very popular early in the pandemic.

  [0:02:04] MP: Hi, I'm Marie Pizzorno. I'm a professor in the biology department. I'm also currently the director of the cell biology/biochemistry program, which is an interdisciplinary program between biology and chemistry. I've been at Bucknell for over 25 years, and I typically teach courses in introductory biology, molecular biology and virology. Yes, I was pretty popular during the pandemic, too. My research interests are actually RNA viruses that infect honeybees.

  [0:02:31] EL: Hi, everyone. I'm Eddy Lopez. I'm an assistant professor in the department of art & art history, where I teach courses in printmaking and design. I'm also the co-director of the Ekard Artist-in-Residence Program here at Bucknell. Currently, I'm completing my sixth year here at the university. In my artwork, or “research” as the University likes to call it, I am amalgamate archives and memories of war into abstractions of vibrant colors, patterns and shapes through wide-scale collages. I use print media, big data and averaging algorithms to create compositions that try to find meaning in the chaos of conflict. In my courses, students tend to work with the stuff that I'm interested in researching as well.

  [0:03:05] BT: Wow, thank you all for giving us such a great overview of all the interesting work that you do. As we jump into this conversation about the College of Arts & Sciences, I wonder if it's best to start by defining what that even is. Obviously, the words “arts” and “sciences” are in the title, but what disciplines are generally represented in a college like this at a university?

  [0:03:25] JP: Sure, Brooke. At most universities — whether you're at a small college, or at a large state school — the College of Arts & Sciences is often home to the broadest range of academic fields. It is, in some sense, the beating heart of a university's liberal arts curriculum. It houses the arts, like music, studio art, theater; the humanities — departments like philosophy, history, languages, literature; the social sciences, economics, political science, anthropology; and natural science — physics, biology, chemistry, things like that.

  Another way to think about arts and sciences is that these are the historic fields of human knowledge and creative expression that are not directly tethered to a specific professional industry. “Arts and sciences” is a bit misleading. We might think of it as everything from arts to sciences.

  [0:04:17] BT: With so many offerings, it sounds like the College of Arts & Sciences is a great place for a student to explore all those variety of disciplines that you mentioned there, John. There are schools that open up courses to most students, regardless of what they're majoring in. Bucknell is one of those schools. I can imagine that gives arts and sciences students more flexibility when it comes to their education.

  [0:04:38] EL: Yeah, certainly, Brooke. For example, in the Department of Art & Art History, most of our students are double-majors, or minors, or students that are just interested in learning about the arts. Our introductory 100 courses and some of our 200 intermediate courses are open to any student across the University. This usually means that, in a printmaking class, I will have students who are studio art majors alongside biology majors, animal behavior majors, education, psychology, English, also undeclared majors. Honestly, the list goes on and on. What this interdisciplinary approach does is sets up students to be able to connect the dots of our multidisciplinary world in ways beyond a single focus. In essence, to use John's words from before, the beating heart of the liberal arts is really found in each of our classrooms.

  [0:05:24] BT: Let's try to paint a clearer picture of what a four-year experience might look like for a student, especially one who could be exploring and dabbling all these different disciplines. Let's start with classes first. Much like high school, is there typically a general education curriculum that all students in the college might follow no matter what they're majoring in? Maybe like at least one science, one math and art class, or something like that?

  [0:05:47] MP: Yes, Brooke. Most schools have some kind of general education curriculum. In my time at Bucknell, there have been a couple of different versions of what we call “general education” at Bucknell for the students in the College of Arts & Sciences. In general, what they've all had in common is they do have requirements to take some number of courses in the arts and humanities, in the social sciences and then in the natural sciences, thereby exposing them to the breadth of those disciplines that the college offers.

  In addition, they're usually requirements that might have them consider a specific topic, like the environment or global issues. The nice thing about those is that they can be satisfied with a wealth of different courses from a wide variety of different disciplines. Finally, there are usually skill-based requirements, like writing intensive course, foreign language courses or laboratory science courses. I think many colleges, though, have moved away from having exact specific course requirements, like a classic English 101 or Western Civilization. The nice thing about these more flexible curriculums is it allows students to meet each of those requirements by taking a course in a discipline that they’re actually really interested in.

  [0:06:55] BT: Yeah. Marie, you mentioned there being able to maybe fulfill a requirement with a couple of different credits from a couple of different types of classes. When we're looking at a major specifically, what about the number of credits to complete a major? Is that requirement pretty uniform across disciplines? Or does it vary? Or is it something that just depends on the school?

  [0:07:17] EL: The requirements certainly vary across disciplines, colleges and universities. Here at Bucknell, for example, most majors tend to be between eight to 12 classes to complete, especially in the College of Arts & Sciences. Although, we do have a few majors that go as high as, say, 18 credits. One thing I want to note that, at Bucknell, most classes tend to be worth one credit. One class equals one credit. Then at some universities, a class may be worth two, three, maybe four credits. It really depends on the university at that point.

  [0:07:43] BT: Is having a class that's worth two, three or maybe even four credits, does that mean that a class is harder than the class that might be worth one credit?

  [0:07:56] MP: No, I think it's just the way Bucknell defines course credits. I think at more traditional colleges — I shouldn’t say traditional — but at other schools, you'd actually use a term called a “course hour” or “credit hour.” That's typically related to the number of hours a class meets per week. Whereas at Bucknell, we do “a class is a class is a class,” and they're all worth what we think is four credit hours.

  [0:08:18] JP: We also have, for example, half-credit courses, quarter-credit courses, which would be, at some universities a one-credit class, a two-credit class. A full class would be a three credit.

  [0:08:26] BT: Thanks for that clarification. Along those same lines, I wonder as well, does more credits in a major mean that that major is any more rigorous than another major with less requirements?

  [0:08:38] JP: Absolutely not. There are many reasons why certain majors might have a lower credit requirement to fulfill that major, while others have a much higher requirement number. None of these reasons have to do with intellectual rigor. In religious studies, for example — my department at Bucknell — our students are required to take eight courses in order to fulfill the major. In those eight courses, they will engage in challenging life-changing exploration of a fundamental aspect of human existence: religion.

  In a different type of setting, we might have devised a religious studies major that had an 18 credit requirement, which would produce students with expertise well above a master's level. That's not why they come to Bucknell, so we don't do that. They come here to connect one way of understanding the world to other ways of understanding the world. Our major really encourages and incentivizes students to pair their curiosity about religion with a double major in another field. We have many students in religious studies who work also in political science, in economics, in biology or pre-med. Because it's our commitment that breadth is a form of rigor, too, not just depth. This is something that liberal arts colleges do very well, specifically, but also arts and science colleges at many universities in general.

  [0:10:03] BT: Yeah. I love that note about breadth and depth. It sounds like, it really just comes down to what a student is looking for from their major and their education within an Arts & Sciences college.

  Let's zoom out a little bit and look at the College of Arts & Sciences as a whole. At some schools, like I mentioned at the top of this episode, a student might find that the majority of students study within the College of Arts & Sciences. About 60% of Bucknell students do. Does more students in that college mean more competition for seats in classes, or other educational opportunities?

  [0:10:35] MP: I think it really depends on what specific educational opportunity we're talking about, and the number of students who want that opportunity. For example, there are majors in the College of Arts and Sciences here at Bucknell that are very popular, and a lot of students who really want to do that major. Then those advanced courses in those subjects might just be limited mostly to students majoring in that discipline because they need those courses to graduate.

  Because Bucknell ensures that students can graduate in eight semesters, if we have a required course that's over-enrolled, we'll try to work with the dean's office to make more seats available, or more sections of the course, if it's possible. It's not always possible, but we try to accommodate the need as much as we can.

  I would imagine at a larger school, where graduating in four years and might not be as ensured, when a class is full, its full. A student has to wait until the next time that course is going to be taught.

  [0:11:26] BT: Are the ways that high school students who may be interested in particular majors can get a sense of how quickly those classes fill up within that major or what majors might be more popular?

  [0:11:36] MP: That's a good question. I think, most colleges probably list their three or five top majors by the number of students that are in them. I think those are the kinds of questions you ask when you go on a tour. The students are really the ones that know that because they're the ones that get upset when they can't get into a class they really want. Go on a tour and ask those hard questions about how hard is it to get into the classes that you really want to take, and you'll hopefully get a pretty honest answer.

  [0:12:02] JP: Another way to think about this, too, is the majors that have a really vertical structure in terms of their requirements, where you can't get to this class until you've taken this class, right? Those majors are going to be the ones where you see those lower level ones filling up very, very quickly because you have to go through those gates first in order to move up the ladder into the mid-level and upper-level courses. Other majors at many colleges don't have as many prerequisites, even to take a 200 or a 300-level course.

  For example, in my department, I have first year students in my 300-level seminar because we don't have prerequisites. Now, they need to know what they're getting into, of course, but they don't have the same type of vertical structure to move through, and so the restrictions are a little bit less. That can impact whether a course fills up immediately, and you have access to it in your first year or two or not.

  [0:12:55] BT: Got you. That's great to keep in mind. I'd like to talk a little bit more about opportunities, especially student research. It might not be the first thing you think of when you're looking at the arts and humanities side of arts and sciences, particularly, but are there ways for students in those majors to get involved in research? What might that look like at various schools?

  [0:13:14] JP: It's a good question, Brooke. Student research isn't just experimenting in a lab setting, although that is often what people think of immediately when they think of research. In the humanities, skill acquisition for research moves at a really slow pace. Let's just imagine a scenario for a minute. Let's say, you're interested in the relationship between Russian literature and Russian politics in the 19th century. You'll, of course, need to read the literature you're most interested in, say Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. You'll need to engage deeply in the scholars who have already interpreted these complicated, really important texts, as well as scholars who've examined the politics of their day.

  If you are really committed to this topic, you'll need to spend time learning Russian in language classes — not only so that you can read the literature in the original language but also so you can read scholarship from Russian scholars about that. So you might not be able to conduct rigorous independent research in a focused way on this topic until your senior year, even though you've been building that interest from day one as a freshman, when you first encountered Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky in a literature class.

  All this is to say that humanities research tends to be much slower and more incremental. Which is not to say that science isn't also incremental in its own way, but you can jump into a lab and really be learning skill sets very quickly and sciences in a way that is just different from humanities research. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities prior to your senior year for research in the humanities. I think Eddy would agree also in the arts in terms of developing studios skill sets, whether you're in studio art, or in theater & dance, and creative writing and other creative endeavors as well.

  Many faculty have long-term projects in the humanities, which students contribute to as research assistants. One colleague of mine who works on Chinese Buddhism will often hire research assistants who have had enough Chinese language work in their background to be able to work with him on building a database for his own book project. Another group I know of on this campus is a group of faculty who are conducting long-range collaborative research on an influential feminist magazine from the late 20th century that looked at the intersection of feminism, art and politics. Students are joining with them in that process to study the lasting legacy of that publication long after it has stopped being circulated.

  Many of our students are engaged also in research over the summer. Usually, they also receive financial compensation and housing on campus for that, too. This is a really great opportunity. Sometimes, they're working with a faculty in a collaborative project, or they have devised their own research project with a mentor, and they're doing it mostly independently. I actually did this for two summers when I was a college student. It was really important in my own intellectual development and in my decision to go to graduate school. It gave me the opportunity and the resources to read deeply in a subject that I become very curious about in a class but didn't have the time during the semester to explore fully.

  Lastly, one of the big things on campus here at Bucknell for student research in the arts and humanities is typical also, I think, at other universities, which is the ability to write an honors thesis towards the end of your time of your academic career. These are focused, long-term research projects that are designed by the students themselves under the supervision of a faculty advisor. It represents a really significant intellectual effort that serves as a capstone to their undergraduate career.

  [0:16:46] BT: Thanks, John, for giving us that really great in depth look at all the different ways students can get involved in research from the arts and humanities perspectives. Now that I know that all those projects exist, I'm so excited to see if I can learn more about them. I hope our listeners are feeling the same way. I also think it's worth talking about research from the sciences perspective as well, both natural and social sciences. Marie, can you give us a look into what that looks like?

  [0:17:12] MP: Obviously, hands on research is a really important activity for many students majoring in a science discipline. We've actually restructured our biology curriculum here at Bucknell so that now students in their very first year get what's called a “course undergraduate research experience,” also known as a CURE. In this course, they work as a class to design a relatively limited time research project, and they carry out that project over the course of that one semester.

  These are becoming recognized and more common in colleges across the country because we know that providing students an authentic research experience early in their education allows them to be more successful academically in their science major, and really sets them up for that more in depth, independent research project that they can then carry on under the mentorship of a faculty member later. Once students take this CURE experience in their first year, we then start encouraging them to start asking faculty if they want to join their labs and become part of the faculty member’s research, as early as their sophomore year.

  In the social sciences, undergraduate research can vary quite greatly between departments on a campus and even within faculty in the department. Again, the way John said about gaining skills that are really in depth that you might not really be able to engage in research into your senior year because you need to know a lot of things and have taken a lot of courses before you have the skills you can. Some faculty might need, again, somebody who can read a specific language to understand original documents, or have really good statistical or data analysis skills to be able to look at large datasets. Those are things that it's going to take a while for students to learn. I do think that many faculty are realizing the benefits of involving students in their scholarship, both to the faculty member themselves and also, the benefit that the students get.

  Just a little bit about when a student joins a professor's research group in the natural sciences, they will usually get that one-on-one mentoring on how to plan their experiments, conduct their experiments, analyze the data. And then, hopefully, their experiments are going to work well enough that they can actually present their findings, either in a poster, or a research article, or a talk. They can get to go to either local conferences or even national conferences. We have students who actually then become co-authors on published manuscripts with their faculty members.

  [0:19:26] BT: I love that you mentioned there quickly the advantages of being able to do research a little bit earlier on in your college career. We actually just had an episode with students talking about their research projects, and that was something that they mentioned was that was a really big influence on their work during their four years here at Bucknell. Of course, that really does depend on the type of school that a student might go to and the size, right? Students really should be looking at, what are the opportunities for joining a lab or joining a project, and when they'll be able to do that?

  [0:19:55] MP: Yeah, absolutely. Schools that have very robust aster's programs, or PhD programs, obviously most of the research that's carried out at those schools is going to be done by those graduate students. We have a very small master's program in the biology department here at Bucknell. Almost all of the research is being done by the undergraduates. I think that's definitely, again, questions that can be asked during a tour, to see how likely it is for an undergraduate to be able to get into work in a research lab during their four years. Again, not just maybe as a senior, but try to get in as early as you can. You want to make sure it's an authentic research experience. It's not just washing glassware, or doing other sorts of routine tasks. You actually want to have some intellectual engagement with the research that you're doing.

  [0:20:41] JP: This is a big difference, too, if I might add, Brooke, between a large R1 and I think a smaller liberal arts college, where you may not have the same level of research resources that are available to you on a large university. But what you do have is the resource of faculty time and attention that is not split in a 100 different directions because of graduate programs and many different kinds of mentorship that are in demand for a faculty member at that kind of institution.

  Here at Bucknell, if you're developing a really strong mentorship relationship with somebody in the arts, and the sciences, and the humanities — whichever discipline — the likelihood that you're going to have a lot more access to them, to their mentorship and their advising, to their expertise and even to their own research that they might be able to collaborate with you in, or in the arts into collaborative creative projects, it's just going to be greater at a smaller college, where that attentiveness is more readily available.

  If a prospective student from high school is thinking about the kinds of qualities they're looking forward to, I encourage them to think about that. If personal attention is really meaningful to them, then that might be a criteria they want to think about more seriously with their college search.

  [0:21:55] BT: Speaking of small liberal arts colleges, we are very familiar with that, being that Bucknell is a relatively small liberal arts institution. We often talk about it on this podcast. We have a whole episode dedicated to “What is a liberal arts education?” That's Episode 9. It seems to me that it's a safe assumption that a College of Arts & Sciences lends itself really well to a liberal arts approach. Eddy, I think you mentioned earlier that students have the opportunity to be a little bit more interdisciplinary in a College of Arts & Sciences. What does that really look like? What does that mean for a student’s experience?

  [0:22:25] EL: Yeah, Brooke. It's absolutely a safe assumption to say that the College of Arts & Sciences is…to use John's words from before, the beating heart of the liberal arts is at the College of Arts & Sciences. I love having biology and chemistry majors that take my courses, printmaking design. I also find students that are in computer science. I have creative writing students in my design courses. These students bring such unique perspectives to my discipline and to the classroom, making the experience for everybody much, much richer — including for myself as a professor. I'm always delighted when someone who brings a different perspective than the one that I have comes to the classroom with these ideas.

  In the studio art department, we get so many double majors. We have students that are not just studio arts majors but also majors in animal behavior, psychology, education, chemistry. Then when these students are in the classroom, it means that they produce artwork that seamlessly connects what they're doing from the studio art perspective with their other disciplines. Outside the classroom, the students conduct research connecting the dots across our entire interdisciplinary college, the University and the world.

  For example, this past summer, I had a fantastic animal behavior and studio art student that worked on a summer research project on endangered species in Pennsylvania. The end result was this beautiful, large-scale print edition featuring all the endangered animals in our state. She brought in her knowledge from her animal behavior biology courses and combined it with what she was learning in the studio art department. It yielded a really a fantastic work of art.

  [0:23:50] BT: That sounds like a really interesting project that combines disciplines that you might not think go together at first. I love that you brought up that example. That interdisciplinary approach is one reason that a student might consider studying within the arts and sciences, especially at a liberal arts school. On the opposite side, are the reasons why a student might want to actually opt for a more focused education instead? Maybe attending a performing arts school, for example, rather than majoring in theater and an Arts & Sciences college?

  [0:24:17] EL: Most certainly, when I speak to students that are potentially thinking of coming to Bucknell to ask questions like that. An art school does allow for deeper engagement with any particular medium or topic — for example, painting, sculpture design. If I find a student that is certain they would like to just study painting, then I think an art school would be a better fit. However, if a student is interested in exploring painting, along with sculpture and photography, — and furthermore, if that student is interested in seeing how these arts tie into a greater context, such as women and gender issues, theology and spirituality, political science and the whole plethora of human experience — then I think a liberal arts university such as Bucknell is the place to be because our infrastructure is set up to pretty much facilitate that cross-pollination that really happens across the disciplines.

  [0:25:11] BT: Regardless of a student's major, or even perhaps, the type of education that they end up pursuing, there’s a common goal between all students who attended college, which is to eventually establish a career in the future. Let's shift our focus there. In terms of careers, there can be this assumption that an engineering, business or science major, perhaps, has more pathways to success than maybe a philosophy major or a language studies major. But I feel like there's some myth-busting that we probably need to do there. What's the actual return on investment for students who study within the arts and humanities?

  [0:25:48] JP: There's so much myth-busting that needs to happen here, Brooke. We could do a whole episode on the myth-busting of this question. The myth of a low return on investment for arts and humanities majors is one of the most persistent yet unfounded myths about higher education, and it just won't die. No one is doomed to unemployment because they pursued a philosophy major. In fact, studies have shown that the opposite may well be true, compared to students who focus on industry specific training and their majors, arts and humanities majors acquire more durable and flexible skills that can adapt to a rapidly changing landscape in the workforce.

  We know that the days of having a career at a single company, or even within a single industry, are largely over. If this is true, the arts and humanities are not a liability but a strength. They enable students to develop the creativity, the analytical skills, the core cultural literacies that allow them to move across different industries. They are more nimble and, therefore, more employable as a result. There's even data to indicate that, over the long-term, the earnings of students coming out of arts and humanities are equal to or even greater than classmates from strictly pre-professional programs as a result of their adaptability.

  I tell my students every semester that if all they do is focus on courses related to a single outcome, they're going to enter the world woefully unprepared. I really like Eddy's quote here where he says, “The world is interdisciplinary.” If you go to college and you focus on one single set of questions and one single set of methods of approaching those questions, you will go out ill-equipped to encounter the questions that the world will pose to you. We believe firmly that the arts and humanities set within an arts and sciences context gives you those skills and those strengths that will enable you to navigate the world in all its complexity.

  [0:27:49] BT: Well, I think we have effectively squashed that myth, at least here on our podcast. Now that we have, what should arts and sciences students be looking for in terms of career, or even graduate school preparation at various schools that they're considering attending?

  [0:28:03] MP: Many students are encouraged to have a career goal in mind because, like you said, that's the end goal. In reality, most students are going to change what their future career goals are, or aspirations are, at least once during their education. That's partially because they're going to learn more about all the different things that are out there, all the different disciplines they can study. They're going to also learn more about their own interests and abilities and what might fit them best. Again, as John said, the best preparation for any career is just having those well-developed skills: critical reading and thinking, problem solving, writing and speaking. These are the skills that a liberal arts education is particularly good at providing and that are in high demand in just about every career.

  
  As Eddy said too, though, if a student is really 100% committed to a career that requires really specific technical training, then they might be best served by attending a school that offers a program in that field. In my own discipline, allied health professionals come to mind — things like radiological technician, and physical therapy, or nursing. The advantage to those more focused programs is they take less time. You're going to combine your introductory coursework with that advanced training that you need to become a professional in that field. Again, what they're going to lose is that opportunity to take all these wide variety of courses that are not directly related to that narrow field. I agree with John, that's going to limit future career options because you might not have that worldview that allows you to advance in the field the way you might if you'd had a broader education.

  At Bucknell, students who want to do those things get their undergraduate education, and then go on and do post-graduate training. We certainly have alumni who do this. I like to think that their broader educational background they got here give them that additional skills and perspectives that will allow them to advance their careers or expand the things they can do in the future.

  Graduate school preparation can be different because, in certain programs, they may require specific coursework or specific research experience to gain entry. In the sciences, lately, we've been really encouraging students to graduates from Bucknell, go out and work for a couple of years in a research lab or in a company to get some more postgraduate research experience before they apply to graduate school. Though, again, we have students who go straight from Bucknell into graduate programs, PhD and master's programs, and they do fine. It's not like you have to get additional experience. I think the world is moving to going into postgraduate education with a couple of years of some kind of work experience under your belt.

  [0:30:30] BT: If a student is wondering what exactly they can do post-college with the major that they've chosen, John, I'll use you as an example. “What can I do as a religious studies major?” Are there ways that they can sus that out as they're looking at the different fields that they're interested in?

  [0:30:45] JP: Absolutely. The first thing that you want to do is talk to your faculty advisors and the other faculty within the departments that you're engaged, that you might not have a clear idea of where it would lead you on the other end, especially if graduate school isn't necessarily the obvious outcome for you.

  Most of our students in religious studies aren't going to do graduate work in the academic study of religion. They're going out into other fields. They're going into pre-law, they're going into medicine, they're going into social work and human services. We know that there's a wide range of industries, but students don't necessarily know that on their way in. So we can help them understand the precedent, where previous students have gone, what their interest in religion led them to do in other fields. We’re the first stop for that.

  Another stop would be a Career Services Center. Every university will typically have this. These staff are very well trained to help students identify areas of passion and interest that align with their academic interests. How to bridge that gap between my intellectual curiosity that is expressing itself through the curriculum as a college student, and what types of fields and industries out in the world might enable me to utilize those curiosities, and passions, and skills that I'm developing right now. Those two things are the first stops you'd want to go to in terms of understanding what possibilities there are for you.

  The third — and many universities will do this as well — the third is connecting with alumni who have been in those fields as well. Many universities, many departments or divisions within universities will try to link students with alumni networks, particularly with alumni who've majored in similar areas as you might be. That can be really meaningful as a networking exercise, but also to provide you information about somebody a little bit further down the road than you who might have been right in your shoes a decade before.

  [0:32:40] BT: It feels like overall in our conversation, something that I'm pulling out is that there's so many options for students who study within the arts and sciences. Even if you've settled on a major, there's so many ways to explore different disciplines, and so many baked-in ways to pull in different disciplines into the work that you do. As we wrap up, I think it would be great to leave this episode with advice for students who may not be sure exactly what they want to study in college. It may be that the arts and sciences is a great home for them. How would each of you advise a student to explore the possibilities?

  [0:33:13] EL: The world is big and open. I would encourage students to explore by taking general education courses in those things that they have an interest in, whether that be film and media, history and politics, another language, music and so on. Each of these, students might find kernels of interest that lead them down a path of greater passion, a possible major or two. Before they know it, a life full of commitment to a profession.

  [0:33:38] MP: Yeah. I'll just echo what Eddy said. There are so many subjects that Colleges of Arts & Sciences offer. Many of them are things that students didn't have access to in high school. Maybe use the general education requirements as a starting point. Take a bunch of courses and a bunch of different subjects and then, hopefully, a student will find what their passion is.

  [0:33:56] JP: Yeah, and I would build off of both of those things. Many students are coming from high school without knowing the full range of disciplines and academic areas that a college has on offer. I think a lot about a quote by Kyla Wazana Tompkins, who's a professor of English at Pomona College. She tells her students at the beginning of every semester, “We're not here to learn what we already know. We're not here to learn what we already know how to do.” I find this really meaningful for me as a professor coming into the classroom with students from a wide range of life backgrounds, academic interests, future goals. I really like this idea. Go towards the unknown.

  I encourage my students to resist the temptation to view their education as simply pre-professional training. Allow your curiosity to take you into unfamiliar, maybe even uncomfortable, territory. This is the point and the privilege of a college education, especially within a College of Arts & Sciences.

  [0:34:53] BT: I love everything you all had to say there. I really hope that our students who are listening are feeling inspired and super motivated to go see where their journeys might lead as an arts and sciences student. Thanks again to each of you.

  [0:35:05] MP: Thank you for having me.

  [0:35:07] EL: Thank you for having us, Brooke.

  [0:35:08] BT: We also want to thank everyone out there for listening. If you're a fan of the podcast, please take a moment to rate, subscribe and share this episode with the students in your life. College Admissions Insider will be back with another episode in just a few weeks. In the meantime, send your questions, comments and episode ideas to podcast@bucknell.edu. We read every note you send.

  Finally, you're invited to follow Bucknell on your favorite social media apps. Just look for @BucknellU on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. You can also follow our student run Instagram account, which is @iamraybucknell. Until next time, keep on reaching for your dreams and your dream school.

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