How do we make our scholarship accessible and meaningful to non-academic audiences? This is a particularly urgent question for the Humanities, which are famously in crisis, but it is relevant to all of the disciplines taught in the College of Arts and Sciences.

This question, in turn, raises questions about how we evaluate and reward academic work: Do we value work targeted to a general audience less than, as much as, or more than work published in primarily academic journals? Do we encourage faculty to pursue projects that directly engage with urgent issues of public policy? Do we encourage students to pursue these kinds of projects?

Here are three articles that explore these questions:

• Making Research Matter: A Public Challenge to Scholars: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/10/12/scholars-need-use-their-research-more-effectively-weigh-public-issues-day-essay .

• One University Takes on the Opioid Crisis: https://www.chronicle.com/article/One-University-Takes-On-the/241325 . (This is an area where we have some expertise in the college.)

• Communications 101 for Professors: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Communication-101-for/241435 .

As the College of Arts and Sciences embarks upon a strategic planning process and contemplates its future, I thought it would be helpful to share articles, books, thought-pieces, blog posts, etc. on higher education that I have found to be enlightening and/or provocative. (This was one of my New Year’s resolutions.)

A recurring theme in these posts will be the future of the liberal arts in higher education and at Seton Hall. As I have said publicly on numerous occasions, it is important that we speak confidently and unapologetically about the importance of a liberal education–an education that fosters critical thinking, creativity, human flourishing, and the common good–without simply “preaching to the choir.” Quite bluntly, we need to a better job of explaining what we do and why ot is relevant.

For this inaugural blog post, I’m linking to two articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education that encourage us to think differently about thinking:

• Can Design Thinking Redesign Higher Ed? posits “design thinking” as an alternative way of doing our collective work as academics, more suited to innovation and problem-solving than the usual meetings. Google “sprint,” anyone?

(Articles are behind a firewall and require either a SHU IP address or that you log in with your SHU credentials.)

Comments are welcome…