100 Years of Learning for Life
To honor its 100th anniversary, the University of Louisville College of Arts and Sciences will host a yearlong Centennial celebration starting this January featuring lectures, exhibits, performances, conferences and an array of other special events. It's an opportunity for the college not only to look back at its vibrant and varied history but also to assert its role in modern society.
That role: To provide a strong foundation of practical learning that offers students virtually limitless options for their paths in life. From its inception, the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) has been committed to a mission that was related to but different from the professional schools, says J. Blaine Hudson, A&S dean and a noted historian.
"That mission was to provide knowledge—broad knowledge, deep knowledge—on which professional study can be built," he says.
The college was created in 1907 largely because of changes related to graduate and professional education, particularly medicine. By the early 1900s—a time when U of L had one of the largest medical schools in the country—it was widely accepted that people who were going to become doctors or lawyers needed foundation in the liberal arts and sciences. Before that, they mostly trained through various apprenticeships.
With 104 students in its inaugural class, the College of the Liberal Arts was first housed in a building downtown. By the mid 1920s it had moved to Belknap Campus. Both the U of L College of Education and Human Development and the School of Music, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2007, started in A&S.
Throughout the decades A&S grew into U of L's largest academic unit with more than 8,000 students—larger than many universities. The college now offers more than 60 degree programs in more than 20 departments within three academic divisions: Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences.
The college's 43,000 alumni include renowned artists and researchers, inspirational teachers and business leaders, award-winning authors and sports legends, and respected leaders in government and their communities. The college is guided by a desire to produce an informed citizenry with a deep sense of social responsibility. It tries to accomplish this is by following "the pure definition of equality of opportunity," Hudson says.
"We have to give as broad and as diverse an array of opportunity to learn and to grow as we possibly can," he says. "We need to be open to all sorts of students … if we want to really be an institution that in some ways is a change agent for the community. It doesn't really do any good if all we do is gild the lily—to reproduce the inequalities of the social order in which we live now."
More so than any other part of U of L, A&S is in a position to instill a sense of social responsibility, Hudson believes, "mainly because you must have a working understanding of a people, of a society, of history to even know what social responsibility means."
Hudson uses a quote attributed to Julius Caesar when he talks about the dangers of ignorance and the importance of helping students find purpose: "If men cannot determine how to rule themselves, then someone will determine how to rule them."
The college cannot tell students how to live, he says, "but we can try to expose students to information they need in order to make informed choices in life."
Propelling Forward
The college is using its Centennial celebration to highlight improvements taking place at the college.
"We're trying to strengthen all the different aspects of the overall college," Hudson says. "It has been very rewarding. The faculty has been very supportive. We're beginning to see some things happen with investments in classrooms. We're doing all we can just to try and make the overall experience better."
One way they are accomplishing this is by adding new graduate programs so that every department offers at least one graduate degree. By the end of the Centennial year that should be accomplished, Hudson says.
A&S is also doing what Hudson calls "microprogramming"—developing centers and institutes that focus on particular areas of excellence. The Center for Asian Democracy and the Institute for Democracy and Development in political science are just a couple of examples of microprogramming.
"It's a way for us to really propel the college forward," Hudson says. "You don't achieve greatness by trying to be like somebody else. That's the ultimate trap that people fall into."
The college also is looking for ways to increase its number of tenured or tenure-track faculty—with the hope of raising it by 25 percent over the next several years. Finally, A&S is making a big push during the Centennial celebration to build a stronger sense of community among A&S alumni, Hudson says.
"The Centennial is going to be an opportunity to reconnect."
For more information about the College of Arts and Sciences Centennial Celebration, visit louisville.edu/a-s.
