Co-Articulating the Value of a Liberal Arts Degree with Students.

While most scholars and higher education professionals believe in the intrinsic value of a liberal arts degree, high school students and their parents often have a different bias as they seek to determine where to invest themselves and their resources. Anyone who has taught in or recruited for the social sciences or humanities will recognize the familiar pattern of eager interest in engaging, challenging topics followed by that unsettled look as the prospective student asks, what could I actually do with this degree? It is a fair question. If we believe in the value of a liberal arts degree, we ought to be able to explain why we do. This article is about how we are collaborating with faculty, the registrar, and the alumni office - as well as alumni themselves - to better answer the question. THE SCHOOL AND THE PROGRAM Our university has a network of (recent graduates) hired to tour high schools across Ontario; the job of the liaisons is to share what makes our liberal arts degree distinct. We are one of three affiliate campuses to a large researchintensive university, and our enrollment is 3,500 full-time undergraduates. The affiliates increasingly are being invited to develop complimentary (non-duplicate) offerings since students can take courses at any campus. Our interdisciplinary program has thrived by providing a distinct worldview for students interested in making a difference and understanding more about the social injustices they witness and read about. In just nine years, the program has grown: we have several full-time faculty and sessional instructors; we teach roughly 200 introductory students each year and offer many core courses, electives and a series of local and international experiential learning opportunities. Yet we were confronted by four significant challenges: * Retention: Could we raise retention in majors/honours modules above the usual 20-25 percent of the first year class ? * Recruitment: How might we better convert high school students' interest and enthusiasm during informational visits into enrollments? * Understanding students: How could we achieve greater clarity around the diversity of our students' interests and futures ? * Vocational Support: Could we identify better ways to support current students and recent graduates who are uncertain how to translate their degrees into vocations and paid positions ? Although the current generation of college entrants tends to be characterized by educational uncertainty and prolonged adolescence, these characteristics tell us little about students' uncertainty about our program in particular. On the other hand, students' genuine concern about the value of the degree - particularly in relation to discerning a career - is a common barrier to choosing (or remaining in) the program. This concern pervades many of our discussions with high school students and parents during welcome days, recruiting events, and the registration period. Our sense was that seniors in the program in fact were faring well compared to their peers in other departments. Many were being awarded internal and external scholarships and grants, and many were using their degrees in impressive ways. But our knowledge about such things was largely anecdotal and was dispersed widely among professors; evidence existed primarily in the form of e-mails and phone conversations. We decided that we owed students a better answer. PROJECT GOALS It was important for us to identify overall as well as division-specific project goals. (Clarity of purpose helps to ensure that a diverse working group makes progress.) We are fortunate to have an innovative registrar with a reputation for openness to student and faculty initiatives. Given the different responsibilities of professors, registrars, and alumni officers, we believed it would be beneficial to clearly state the unifyinggoals of our project as well as distinct, role-specific benefits and objectives. …

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