Timeline for Is it reasonable to request an exemption from certain degree requirements?
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18 events
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| Aug 19, 2015 at 1:19 | comment | added | postagepaid | @ChemicalEngineer perhaps another way to look at taking these requirements is considering new research directions. Research is taking a interdisciplinary approach between different faculties and schools. It's becoming more expected that arts and science faculties start working together to generate new research and funding. As an engineer said to me (a social scientist) "we have the tools and skills to engineer great things, but we haven't got a clue on what to do with them." Humanities/social scientists know how best to apply the new technology in ways that might be invisible to the scientist | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 9:53 | comment | added | Nat | @PeteL.Clark: Dunno, I've taken more of those classes than you have yet can't claim to have found a value in them. If this were a better venue, I'd have been interested in asking why you'd credit them with teaching you to think. I'm new here, but gonna hit that "automatically move this discussion to chat" link to see what happens in hopes that it'll prove to be such a venue. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 9:44 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | I can only end by saying that the liberal arts education I received greatly enriched my life. I write a whole bunch of math papers these days, but I could imagine not doing so. I could not imagine my life without having learned to read, think and write as I did from my liberal arts coursework. I hope some day you will be similarly enriched. No hurry: I am not worried that these skills or courses are on their way out. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 9:40 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | You are entitled to your opinion. I've said it doesn't seem helpful to the OP; having any whiff of "I see no value in the humanities" in his request is his worst strategy for being able to take the two math courses. (Rather, the OP should satisfy the requirements and take the extra courses.) | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 9:27 | comment | added | Nat | @PeteL.Clark: Yes-ish. I've been to about a dozen colleges - started young, kind of a weird story - and two were liberal arts colleges. However, my primary and preferred experiences have been at more technically focused places. As for the advice, honestly, I really don't see value in such classes. The Liberal Arts curriculum strikes me as a historical artifact; it's clearly receding against the increasingly technical focus of academia. Just, it's slower to modernize in some places than others. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 9:22 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @ChemicalEngineer: Did you go to a liberal arts college in the United States? (By the way, you are not using the term "Creative Writing" in the sense used by American academia.) As advice for someone who is seeking to take two additional classes, "I've never seen any value in the courses that you are required to take" is not very practical. As I've said, the American academic community does see value in these requirements, so this kind of distaste is not going to do anything positive for the OP. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 9:19 | comment | added | Nat | @PeteL.Clark: I guess we just see these subjects very differently. From where I sit, they're pretty much all just creative writing courses with different flavors. For example, the massive section on Foreign Languages is just "creative writing using different words". And those English classes are "creative writing about other creative writing". Etc. I always felt that they were easy-A's, but regretted having to sink time into attending lectures. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 9:12 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @ChemicalEngineer: For instance, see Area C of this page: bulletin.uga.edu/fall1999/bulletin/prg/core_curriculum.html. There are a lot of courses here. So far I've looked through about one hundred of them and found two that mention creative writing: English 3800 and English 4800. In the second hundred: Drama 3020 and Drama 4000. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 9:05 | comment | added | Nat | @PeteL.Clark: Less than 5% of Humanities classes do creative writing of any sort? I just looked up UGA's curriculum and that really doesn't seem accurate. Could you elaborate on what creative-writing-free Humanities courses compose 95+% of the undergrads' credit hours? | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 9:01 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @PeteL.Clark: Ok, I somehow suspected this might be a language and culture issue to some extent. Over here, we would count a writing course suitable for STEM as a STEM course, not as a humanities course. Likewise, we would count courses as the ones described by you as STEM courses, as long as they are at least slightly focused on something STEM-like (if only by using e.g. a physics text as an example for practice), which may well blur the issue. Note that the answerer specifically refers to "creative writing" sometimes; possibly, the answer is based on a similar interpretation (?) | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 8:58 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | ....Rather what you learn in humanities courses in the US is how to read texts closely, understand and critique arguments made there, and how to make clear, convincing, insightful arguments of one's own. I have never heard anyone in the liberal arts system claim any direct usefulness in writing technical manuals: rather we would say that it teaches students to think and write clearly and that will be useful in whatever they do. The skill of technical writing in a given STEM field is rarely taught at the undergraduate level in a liberal arts program. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 8:54 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @O.R. Mapper: You are from a part of the world which doesn't have a clear analogue to the American liberal arts degree. So I hope you are not assuming that humanities courses and writing assignments mean what they would in your schooling. The percentage of humanities courses in which students do "creative writing" of any sort is probably less than 5%. I know of no American college in which such courses would be required..... | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 8:47 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | ... difficult at first to suppress many of the writing habits that had been beneficial for me in humanities, but that were detrimental when it came to writing technical things. I also fully agree with item 3, and in fact, occasional remarks here on Academia SE that STEM majors would have to take humanities courses to learn and practice writing regularly surprise me. The STEM programs I am familiar with invariably include a great deal of writing, always taught by STEM departments. This is not to say that creative writing is a useless skill, just not one that will help with writing STEM texts. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 8:41 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | Upvoted, as particularly items 2 and 3 absolutely match my experience, even though I do not agree with the conclusion that it is a reasonable (individual) request if the requirements are in place as they are. I very much agree with item 2, though it should be pointed out that the writing skills I came in touch with in humanities were indeed focused on very non-technical things such as poems, prose-style stories, newspaper-like writing, etc., which are very different from writing in technical contexts such as design documents. As I implied in another comment here, I found it quite ... | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 8:40 | comment | added | Nat | @PeteL.Clark: The listed arguments were for the poster's own consideration, not to be presented to the Humanities professors. Also the decision to attend a Liberal Arts college was made while the poster was still a high school student and potentially colored by considerations other than the curriculum; obviously their current interest is in a more technical education. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 8:25 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | I am a professor in a STEM subject, and I find the first three arguments to be terrible, liable to create a much worse impression than "I really want to take these other classes, and I don't see how to do it otherwise." The second argument in particular is quite repugnant to me. You seem to be saying that you find no value in a liberal arts education. There are schools for people like that, but the school that the OP has chosen is not one of them. There is no chance that this blatant disregard for the college's own requirements will go over well. | |
| Aug 18, 2015 at 8:04 | review | First posts | |||
| Aug 18, 2015 at 8:22 | |||||
| Aug 18, 2015 at 7:54 | history | answered | Nat | CC BY-SA 3.0 |