UVCC College Times, 1989-11-01

              c OLLEGE TIME (Presents November 1, 1989 in f by Elaine Englehart Director, NEH Grant Program Utah Valley Community College has a $ 1 14,000 grant with National Endowment for the Humanities. The funding centers around a core course entitled "Ethics and Values. " This course is innovative and highly successful. For the past two years, the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges and National Endowment for the Humanities has selected this course and the NEH program surrounding this course as one of eight exemplary programs in America. For the past three summers, twelve humanities faculty members have studied with national scholars in two-week seminars. The purpose was to gain greater understanding and knowledge needed for teaching the ethics course. The seminars were paid for by the NEH. In addition to the scholars brought in for the two-week seminars a humanities scholar of national prominence has visted UVCC every quarter for the past three years. These schollars generally give a lecture to the student body and community. The rest of the day is spent with the humanities faculty members, discussing information and principles in the "Ethics and Values" course. Another aspect of grant funding deals with the purchase of library books. Over $60,000 in library books have been donated to the college. Thirty Thousand dollars was donated by NEH and this amount was matched my private contributors to UVCC. E thics and Values" is an exciting class. It is interdisciplinary. The disciplines of philosophy, religion, history and literature are used in a n effort to teach the subject of ethics and values in a more wholistic manner. The class is based on principles of critical thinking and self-confrontation. Each student is responsible for understanding, pondering and researching hisher ethics and values. This understanding is focused through in-class discussions, papers and journals. Sometimes, confronting oneself can be a avery painful part of life. Students need to know there are many great thinkers in the areas of philosophy, religion, history and literature who have faced many of these dilemmas. These great thinkers should be used as sources for discussion and papers. We are now ready to add our second interdisciplinary humanities course, history of Civilization. We have applied for funding from NEH to make sure this course is developed and taught on a national level. There are several reasons why general studies faculty members decided to implement this very important new course. The history of civilization is one of the most important quests in which we can engage the minds of our students, faculty, and community. It is the study of individuals in their efforts to understand themselves, their families, their neighbors, their gods, their enemies their world. In viewing approximately the last 3,000 years, we see lives which have traveled many dimensions of moral and intellectual thoughts. Their trials, accomplishments, defeats, successes, and ways of life have been preserved for us through inventions, theories, music, literature, and art. Were these accomplishments valued during their formative years? Are these societal influences recognized and loved in different dimensions today? At UVCC, we believe our students must receive a significant exposure to past civilizations. Through interdisciplinary humanities we intend to probe the works, thoughts, and accomplishments of men and women to discover why the past is relevant and significant in today's technological world. We will not only focus on facts about individual conscieousness and the nature of the human community, but techniques and approaches for enhancing inquiry into their daily activites and the consequences of choices in behaviors. This course will show how the humanities give focus to political activities, it should demonstrate that the humanities and sciences must be allies. When these fields bond, the benefits are great for past, present, and future socieities. Through interdisciplinary humanities, the exploration of human experience introduces us to different ways of examining concepts and ideas; yet also fosters a connective ability, a power to see all knowledge as interrelated. In recent years, a nationwide effort to improve education has produced an array of reports, recommendations, and examples of renewed commitment in colleges and universities. This includes reports by the National Endowment for the Humanities.The Association of American Colleges, the National Institute of Education, and the Carnegie Foundation. Issues have been raised regarding "the closing of the American mind." After a careful study of these reports, our World Civilization Committee determined our mission statement for this project would center around the qualities of an educated person and how this course sequence could ensure our students are educated. As a committee, we reflected on the question, "What are the qualities of an educated person?" As a subset of this, we pondered, "What are the necessary skills and knowledge commonly associated with an individual who is thought to be educated?" In This Issue UVCC hosts Western Humanities Conference page 3 NEH Chairwoman Lynne Cheney page 3 The "50 Hours" report pages 4-5 The Gallup Test for Seniors How well do you do? pages 6-7 rT e concur that an educated person is one who has a well-y developed mind, one who continues to learn, and one who uses education and learning responsibly. Educated persons should have the necessary knowledge for insight into the world in areas such as history, cultures, philosophy, ethics and morals, religion, languages, literature, arts, science, and mathematics. Educated persons can critically and rationally discuss these insights in both verbal and written forms. Educated persons will have a desire to continually improve their understanding of great writers and thinkers, world events, cultures, and their lives centered in friendship and family. The educated person would Find fullfill-ment in the student of fundamental, timeless dilemmas such as: How do men and women make intellectual, moral, and spiritual sense of a world in which injustice, irrationality, despair, and death are as common as family, friendship, reason, hope, and birth? How do societies define the good life, the moral life and try to attain it? How do women and men reconcile the freedom and responsibilities of citizenship and express their full nature as well? NEH grant brings nationally recognized scholars to UVCC for seminars, lecture series A humanities scholar of national prominence has visited UVCC every quarter for the past three years. These scholars generally give a lecture to the student body and community. The rest of the day is spent with the humanities faculty members, discussing information principles in the "Ethics and Values" course.Thc scholars who have visited our campus are: Spring 1987 Dr. Jackson Newell, Dean, Liberal educationUniversity of Utah, "Ethics and the Concept of learning".NEH Scholars Continued on page 8