BY MICHELLE MALDONADO
I studied French literature in college. I was not thinking about a career, nor was I questioned about the marketability of my choice. My Cuban parents, who came here as political refugees, had no understanding of higher education in this country. I spent my years at Georgetown University, including one year abroad in Paris, reading literature, philosophy and theology, not only for the sake of acquiring knowledge, but more importantly for those deeper questions of meaning and purpose they provoked. As a theologian, I am still wrestling with many of the very same questions that entered my life when I was 17. And today, as dean of a college of arts and sciences at a Catholic and Jesuit university, I want our students to have that same experience of wonder and awe at the transformational liberation found in the intellectual act.
Higher education is very different today from my undergraduate days. Conversations about the value of a university education focus on career readiness, critical competencies, and transferable skills. And while part of me dies a little when I hear (and, I admit, even use) these terms to describe the undergraduate education, I recognize that universities must be honest and frank about the contours of our historical moment.
Yet I do not believe it has to be one or the other: we can prepare our students for careers and we can also create a space for them to pursue these deeper questions of meaning and vocation.
In an effort to integrate career preparation and the pursuit of deeper meaning and vocation, Loyola Marymount University’s (LMU) Career and Professional Development office offers an annual vocational discernment retreat for sophomores and transfer students. VOCARÉ is an opportunity for LMU students (above) to reflect on where they have been, who they are, and where they are going. Photo courtesy of Loyola Marymount University.
There is much in Montás’ work that resonates with my understanding of a Catholic and Jesuit liberal arts education. Like Montás I agree that a significant goal of a liberal arts education is to prepare undergraduates for civic responsibility. These questions of meaning are at the core of both human freedom and self-determination. A liberal arts education creates a space for us to examine the complexity of the human condition.
And yet the cultivation of and access to a liberal arts education is not egalitarian. As someone who is dedicated to advocacy for First Generation, low income, and historically underrepresented students, I was especially moved by Montás’ call to dismantle the practice of pointing these students to an education that emphasizes practical skills, denying them the space to ask those complex questions in the search for meaning. I share his concern that what we describe as general or core education at universities has become redefined by disciplinary and departmental boundaries—and turf wars, I would add, that undercut an authentic, shared curriculum.
While I recognize Montás’ view that the Western tradition is an essential though not sufficient element of a core curriculum, I would argue for a global perspective that does not follow a “West and the rest” model, but instead includes the West within a broader global paradigm. I cannot help but note his book focuses exclusively on male authors, and as I read it, I could not help but think of one of my “core” authors, the 17th Century Mexican poet and playwright Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who reminds us, “If Aristotle had cooked, he would have written a good deal more.” To be Catholic is to be global in ways that are not always reflected in our curriculums, and Sor Juana reminds us of the intellectual and contemplative value of everyday life.
Jesuit universities speak of the care of the person, the service of faith and the promotion of justice, and contemplation in action. Roosevelt Montás does not use these terms, yet his passionate case for liberal education embodies the core of who we are and who we strive to become.
Michelle Maldonado is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Scranton.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Emily Morter via Unsplash.