DANBURY, Connecticut — Four WestConn educators — two professors and two administrators, all from the Macricostas School of Arts and Sciences (MSAS) — recently attended a leadership institute that fortified their beliefs and energized their ambitions to support the study of liberal arts as the foundation of learning and an engaged life.
“We were able to bring our expertise and our perspectives together in a way that we don’t usually get to do because we don’t often get four days dedicated to focusing on a single project,” said Dr. Katherine Allocco, professor and associate chair of the department of History, Philosophy & World Perspectives. “We didn’t open our email there, and we really, really focused on thinking about how administration, staff, faculty and students in MSAS could work together to strengthen our college because the liberal arts are the foundation of a WestConn education. The liberal arts are where university education began in the 11th and 12th centuries. We want to help our students understand that studying a variety of disciplines in the liberal arts is important and it benefits them.”
VELI (Values-Enacted Leadership Institute) is a five-day retreat was offered by HuMetricsHSS with teams from six other universities to explore the structure of higher ed and enable educators to develop new processes for positive change. The WestConn team was granted a scholarship funded through the Mellon and Hewlett Foundations that covered all expenses to the July institute and on-going support for the this academic year.
In addition to Allocco, Dr. Michelle Brown, Dean of the Macricostas School, Dr. Bernadette Ludwig, associate dean, and Dr. Jessica Schofield, associate professor of Political Sciences, all represented WestConn.
They chose to ponder the reality that the social sciences and humanities — the disciplines of, for instance, Anthropology, English, Political Science, History, languages, Philosophy, and similar — are not currently championed in the national political discourse and perhaps not around many family dinner tables when students discuss what they might study at a university.
“Our primary question going into this workshop was, ‘What do we want to focus on for the future for the School of Arts and Sciences?’” Schofield said. “And you know, we’ve been put in this defensive position with attacks against the liberal arts and financial difficulties at so many universities. So, we wanted to put aside the negativity. We want to build community in the School of Arts and Sciences, we want to build community amongst faculty, staff, and our students, so that WestConn has a feeling of connection. We want WCSU to be a place where people are coming, not just because they have to be here, but because there is this shared connection and that we have a feeling of a university together. And we want to build that within the School of Arts and Sciences so that our students can see the connection between us and understand that they can be part of that too.”
Brown said the group shared their vision and experience with VELI at the MSAS’s Opening Retreat at the start of the fall semester.
They plan to start with small steps to build community, such as a ‘Walk-and-Talk’ series to share news outside of the confines of a classroom or office. During winter, coffee hours will be scheduled and perhaps informal faculty lunches with board games. The next step will be to extend invitations to MSAS students, and then to faculty and students from Business, Performing and Communication Arts, and Professional Studies.
In addition, they are already working to refine how they tell their story to prospective students. “The liberal arts teach the skills that employers are crying for,” Brown said. “They want graduates who can speak coherently and who can communicate in writing. They want graduates able to take new information, digest it, and be able to do something with it. And they need to have some facility with information literacy. Our students learn these skills in any of our majors, and they can take that learning in any direction of employment. This is work I get excited about.”
Schofield pointed out that students today can expect to have many jobs during their lives.
“They need to be adaptable, they need to have a base skill set, and that is the primary purpose of a university education,” she said.
“The liberal arts open so many doors,” Allocco added. “That’s something we’re truly excited and re-energized about. Our students can choose majors in the humanities, social sciences, or the sciences, which can take them down pathways they may have never considered before arriving at WestConn. These majors also help you to become a good citizen, a good parent, an active member of your community. The liberal arts are foundational and help make the world a better place.”
Ludwig pointed out that the Covid pandemic and response by institutions — which in higher education meant universal remote learning, with an accompanying loss of community and personal interaction — set back most universities. WestConn also had two interim presidents before hiring Dr. Jesse Bernal as permanent leader a year ago.
“I think the underpinning all of this is culture building,” Ludwig said of the VELI training. “Culture’s been eroded through at this institution as we got through Covid, and over the course of leadership transitions. This is about resetting and putting intentionality into building a culture of trust and communication, and collaboration over competition, and then the more specific work-type aspects can flow from that.”
Western Connecticut State University changes lives by providing all students with a high-quality education that fosters their growth as individuals, scholars, professionals and leaders in a global society. Our vision: To be widely recognized as a premier public university with outstanding teachers and scholars who prepare students to contribute to the world in a meaningful way.