HALO Jumping and the Liberal Arts
The four Liberal Arts Plus initiatives are becoming the runway where students first test the engine of their liberal arts education.
Liberal Arts Plus
♦ Democracy and Public Discourse (WDPD)
♦ Global Health
♦ Center for Innovation, Business, and Entrepreneurship (CIBE)
♦ Digital Arts and Human Values
In the summer blockbuster Mission Impossible: Fallout, Tom Cruise leaps from a plane flying at 25,000 feet in a maneuver called a HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) jump. The technique is typically used by U.S. special forces like the Navy SEALs, but the single-shot sequence provides the film with an unforgettable scene. There’s something about a free fall from five miles up that grabs your attention.
I have occasionally quipped that we at Wabash educate our students to be the intellectual equivalent of the Navy SEALs. They are dropped into a tough situation, have to figure it out, and do the right thing.
I see that “get the job done” mentality time and again when I meet alumni, regardless of their profession. Whatever their major at Wabash, they gained enough from those studies to find vocations and serve their families and their communities.
Their liberal arts education is the engine of their working lives.
The same will be true for today’s Wabash students. But for more and more of them, one of the four Liberal Arts Plus initiatives has become the runway on which they first test that engine, and sometimes in “ludicrous mode,” as Elon Musk would say—0 to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds.
we want our students to follow their academic paths, wherever they may lead. From that great tradition, they will think broadly and deeply to better understand the world.
We also want to make sure they have the tools to shape that world.
That’s why we created the four Liberal Arts Plus initiatives soon after I arrived at Wabash. They help our students gain interdisciplinary depth and understanding. They also give our students “life hacks”—ways to be more productive in pursuing the things they do.
Wabash has always been great at providing learning opportunities for students who want to pursue a career in a particular academic discipline. If you want to be a chemist, you work with your professor, work in the labs, and find various internships, on campus and off. There is a clear path for you to work your way up.
The Liberal Arts Plus initiatives are interdisciplinary lab spaces—places to practice your liberal arts education in the world while you’re still a student; a way to learn to do that more effectively in a broad range of possible vocations.
You’ll find a wonderful mix of students and career aspirations in each of these programs. Yes, there are biology and pre-med majors in Global Health, but also filmmakers, economists, and poets. Students involved with the Center for Innovation, Business, and Entrepreneurship (CIBE) come from a variety of majors, but all of them share the same results: incredible internships and career placement at rates far above national averages.
In this issue you’ll read about Anthony Douglas ’17, who knew he wanted to be a doctor but found some of his most rewarding work as a Fellow with the Democracy and Public Discourse initiative. That inspired and shaped the kind of doctor he will be.
Financial economics major Louis Sinn ’19 is learning filmmaking in Digital Arts and Human Values with a goal to become a producer who provides more opportunities for others to tap their creative potential.
liberal arts plus is about more than a narrow sense of individual development; these initiatives are active opportunities to live humanely.
Students in Global Health have worked in the slums of Peru and returned to apply what they’ve learned to public health issues in Montgomery County.
Democracy Fellows have met with leaders in a struggling Appalachian community to find common ground for economic development.
Our students encounter those who have lived difficult lives. They put understanding, empathy, and compassion to work. That’s critical to whatever they do in life.
They don’t walk into those situations unprepared: Global Health students worked with a theater professor on expression and empathy, an unexpected but not really surprising way the academic disciplines come together in Liberal Arts Plus.
I think about video games in which you take a journey and pick up rewards along the way—a magic rock, a jeweled sword, a ring—maybe even an extra life or two. That’s what Liberal Arts Plus does. It’s a “Plus-up," giving students those special tools they will need someday, so they are ready to take that leap—if not from 25,000 feet, certainly from the stage in front of the Chapel on Commencement Day.
GREGORY HESS
President | hessg@wabash.edu