Fifteen professors from across the country selected to attend national liberal arts seminar at Transylvania University
LEXINGTON, Ky.—Fifteen faculty members from some of the top liberal arts colleges in the country will converge at Transylvania University later this week for a seminar called “Twenty-First Century Liberal Education: A Contested Concept.” The eighth annual event will draw participants from institutions such as Pomona, Carleton, Kenyon and Middlebury colleges from Thursday to Sunday. Ten seminar sessions and two plenary talks will address a variety of topics—from modernizing liberal education to exploring its evolution. “We remind ourselves what it has been so we can understand what it is,” seminar coordinator and Transylvania political science professor Jeffrey B. Freyman said. “Transylvania has historically played a central role in that, because we’re such an old institution.” Founded in 1780, Transylvania is among a handful of colleges that pioneered higher education in America. One of the seminar’s two plenary speakers will be Robin Feuer Miller, a Brandeis University professor who is an expert in Russian literature and senior advisor to the provost for faculty. She will present From Well-Rounded to Sharp: Liberal Education in the Twenty-First Century on Thursday night. Then on Saturday, Neal Broadus Abraham, a physics professor and executive director of Five Colleges, Inc., will present Liberal Education in an Era Requiring Global Citizenship. Five Colleges is a prestigious consortium of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Freyman said participants in the seminar—sponsored by the university’s Bingham Program for Excellence in Teaching—will come