Combining Two Cultures

Download or read book Combining Two Cultures written by Herb Jenkins and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2004 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research-intensive universities have long struggled to reconcile the imperative of specialized learning with the need for a broader, more liberal education. Combining Two Cultures provides a comprehensive account of a degree program at a distinguished Canadian university, McMaster, aimed at accomplishing this synthesis. This innovative program has stood up well over more than two decades. It has a curriculum balanced between arts and sciences and is committed to developing broadly applicable intellectual skills, above all those that underlie scholarly inquiry into questions of importance to students and to the society they live in. It attempts to harmonize the excitement of exploring a broad range of fields with students' needs to meet the requirements for advanced study in professional and academic graduate disciplines. This book offers insights into the challenges of planning and establishing a program of this kind. Brief personal reflections from many of the program's graduates, firsthand observations from current students, and instructors' accounts of their experiences give a vivid sense of what the program has meant to its participants.