Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Jeff Yan.
In this episode, you will hear Part Two of my conversation with Tonya Hendrix,
Demetri Kapetanakos, and Dionne Miller from LaGuardia Community College.
More links and information about today's conversation can be found on Digication's
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Full episodes of Digication Scholars Conversations can be found on
YouTube or your favorite podcast app.
Now, I think that LaGuardia, you also I think that one of the really
cool, smart things, and I don't know whether this is part of the calculus,
but I know that there is, you know, at least in the past, uh, some, some
idea of co-ops, you know, for students to work, you know, with internships
and so on, it really almost like.
Like immediately prove that, doesn't it?
Um, because you are, you are also in the real world and saying, Hey,
actually what I'm doing matters and there is a place for it, right?
Yeah, we definitely have developed over the last few years, I now focus on
Experiential Learning, even beyond the internship idea, but helping students
to see how what they're learning in the classroom can actually impact their
communities and make things better.
And that's really a powerful form of learning.
I think of it as transformational learning when students can take this thing that I'm
learning in whichever class and apply to some issue or problem in my community and
see that knowledge making a difference.
You know, I came from a background where in high school, my principal had
a big focus on what she called a rounded education, which, which now, you know,
I equate to a Liberal Arts education.
And when I went to college, it was, well, we're not educating you for a particular.
Skill or job.
We're educating you to be able to learn so that wherever you find yourself
you have the skills to learn something new something that's applicable to the
situation that you find yourself in and you know, I think that's what we aim for
at LaGuardia in our Liberal Arts program that we're giving students the skill to
to learn wherever they find themselves, whatever it is that they're doing and
also to Apply that knowledge to their their communities and see that their
knowledge is not just for them and their personal ambitions, but also can impact
community that they should care about.
It is so, so powerful.
And I actually think that there's a something, you know, like, um,
what you just said echoes with me so well, because there is, it's really
different when a student is driven by something that they can see and
experience and they can believe in.
Because this is my, my community is my family, is my friends.
These are my, you know, relatives that when I do these things, it
actually worked for, for them, right?
That to me is an even more direct, you know, sort of, um, because I think that
some of it is sometimes kind of myth like.
I have, uh, teenagers in my, in my household, and sometimes they would go,
Hey, I knew someone who You know, um, you know, who, you know, I saw someone
that does this job and, and they were going to charge a charge us a lot of
money because we have to, you know, fix something or whatever it might be.
And, and, and, and we require the service and then it go, well, that
would be a really great profession.
That's what they, where they're learning that from, right?
They are getting that.
But, but they're exposed to so little of it.
That's whatever that came first.
It seems like I could see myself doing that.
And immediately they go like, let's do that.
And I, and I, I think that the, the idea that they, they just didn't
really quite get the exposure.
If, if they were exposed to Leonardo da Vinci, they might
have been painters instead.
I don't know.
Right.
Or they might've been writers instead.
So I, I just think that there's a little bit of this sort of.
It's slightly myth based right now, um, that, Hey, you know, these skills gets
me a job and a paycheck where those don't, I don't think it's actually true
because there are plenty of people.
And in fact, you know, uh, Demetri had said, Hey, you're from the Ivy leagues.
You know, actually these kids get a lot of jobs and good jobs
and good start paying jobs.
And guess what?
Most of their degrees are largely Liberal Arts-based.
Um, and so it's a, uh, it's, it's a little bit, it's sort of like weird that, you
know, sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, you know, I love what you just said, we're
not a workforce development, we want to provide them with an education, right,
that encompasses Critical thinking, but also like when I saw your, the template,
can we talk about that a little bit?
You created a template, which was really a big part of your paper.
And I don't want to have this whole conversation.
We're talking about that.
Um, you, you have this template that you've created and clearly
you wanted to share it with others.
Um, that had, you know, six, I think it was like six or seven big.
Pages, big topics, um, I will share the paper so people can really read
the details for those who are really interested, but it would be great
if you all can maybe talk a little bit about that and what are some
of the, the big ideas from this.
Do you want me to start?
Well, go ahead, Demetri.
Okay.
I think, well, I mean, I think the page, I mean, the template that we
came up with really comes out with a project that Dionne sort of, you know,
um, really wanted to sort of build a Liberal Arts identity and think
about how could students be engaged in the Liberal Arts on a meta level.
So, Tonya and I really were thinking about how do we layer.
The levels of reflection and identity building that are needed in order
to sort of come out and say, Yeah, I know what the value is of the Liberal
Arts, what we've been talking about.
How do we get the students slowly but steadily to build to that point
when they're like, Aha, I got it.
And that really is about sort of building step by step and thinking through how does
that fit into a larger curriculum, right?
What are the points in the curriculum that we want them to be like, stop
and think instead of just saying, okay, I'm just going through this.
And I think, again, this idea of reflection and identity building
are the two major components of.
This template.
So and I think it's taken students beyond.
This is the Liberal Arts.
This is what I'm learning to.
I am the Liberal Arts.
The Liberal Arts matters to me.
It's integ... It's integral to who I am.
And so we're, you know, we're trying to transition the students, right?
So we're... They embody their Liberal Arts education, because I truly feel deep in
my heart that if a student can explain to somebody what the Liberal Arts is.
Right?
You are far ahead and above and beyond most students who graduate
with Liberal Arts degrees.
And that's part of what we're asking them to do, starting from the very
first sem very first, uh, semester in their first year seminar class.
This is what people say the Liberal Arts is.
What do you think about this?
How is this going to help you?
In college, how can this help you beyond right?
Start to really embody what is Liberal Arts.
So it is kind of speaking about what Dionne mentioned earlier, an
experiential learning process, right?
Delving into the Liberal Arts.
How does this matter?
Like Demetri said, in my everyday life, it's Liberal Arts.
Let me ask you this.
It's liberal.
Should people be looking at Liberal Arts, sort of this thinking, this mindset.
A skill that they can learn and develop and be more
sophisticated over time with it.
I would say absolutely.
I think we have this mindset that we were, when we were born, given
this many cards of intelligence.
And it's still, like you said earlier, a myth.
We know now that's not true.
Our neural networks can be retrained and reshaped.
So if that's true, we can continue to learning, which is why all three of us
have said something about getting the skills to continue learning, right?
Because you can continue to learn.
I think Demetri and Dionne will agree that the work that we did in order to
get our advanced degrees, or at least I know for me, does not It doesn't
figure into my everyday life now,
but it did teach me skills that I still, I have to write emails on a
daily basis, not that I enjoy the process at all, but I have to, right?
I have to write emails.
You have to be able to communicate with people.
And that's one of the foundations of a Liberal Arts education
is communicating your ideas.
And as you said earlier, when we practice those skills.
We get better at doing them.
I also want to just pop in and add, I think, you know, we were, we've been
talking about how jobs have been such an important part of our identity.
Like when we always ask someone, it's what you do.
And I feel the Liberal Arts adds another layer of identity where it
becomes, well, what are your passions?
What are you thinking?
What are you interested in?
And it's just a different way of.
I think identifying yourself and also walking through the world,
both at the same time, right?
Right.
It's a way to know yourself better.
So I tell my students all the time, it's okay if you didn't like these particular
chapters in your biology textbook.
You may like other chapters.
Part of knowing.
It's knowing what you don't know, and that's not at all
reflected in our society.
No one can know everything, but if you know what you don't know and you're
able to learn, then you can go get it.
I think that what you are all doing here is so incredibly important.
One of the things that I. I feel very strongly about is that
it feels like to me that reflection should be a skill that you can
differentiate from when you were a baby all the way to you are.
I'm, I'm not even, I'm going to skip over PhDs, but I'm talking about life,
you know, all the way to when you, you know, eventually, you know, disappear
from earth, all of that experience.
You know, it's a skill that you get.
And by the way, it has been the truth for humanity throughout the history.
That's why, you know, the native Americans have the elders and Chinese talk about,
you know, like what happens when they, you know, when, when, uh, you know, how do you
think about, um, you know, people who have experience and, and they're enlightened
because they've gotten all the meditations over time and so on and so forth.
Um, But, but my thinking about it, that to me, that one of the big
observation that I've, I've had for a long time, and I've, I'm continuously
puzzled by it is that we pay so much attention to skill level it, when it
comes to something like let's call.
I'm not using the as an attack, by the way, but I'm using as an
example, let's take math because none of you guys here teach math.
So I don't feel like I'm impacting you, um, but it really applied to almost every
domain where we know that, you know.
Like at kindergarten, you are at this level, being able to have
concepts of counting and whatnot.
At certain level, you're able to do certain kind of arithmetic.
And then at some level you're doing pre-calculus, calculus, et
cetera, and so on and so forth.
And we, I'm not even criticizing and whether they are value and whether we
should have them, but my point is see how sophisticated we've differentiated
each and every level of this.
Yet, when we talk about reflection, which to me is much more important
because it literally is a building block of our neural network, like, um,
Tonya, you had just mentioned, yet we are still relatively sort of soft about
what just reflect you learn to reflect.
Like, I don't have the vocabulary to say now that you are a, you know,
graduate of this or now that you are, you should be able to do it at this level.
Like your neural network should be this thick and this wide, or, or
at least have, you know, have been, have been able to process things
that are off the sixth degree, right?
We are not really even putting enough effort into it.
To really do it aside, aside from a program like yours, where you've dedicated
an entire program where people can actually have a degree on in Liberal
Arts, where you are, you know, like really thinking through like, well,
the curriculum is how to think is the ability to develop purpose and need.
And by the way, developing purpose and meaning to me is what's really beautiful
about what you, you all had talked about, because it's not just about getting that
paycheck either, because, you know, there are, there's getting a paycheck in a way
that is fulfilling and there's a paycheck.
That's just a paycheck.
Um, you know, um, and, and, and it doesn't feel right to just get our
students to get a paycheck without giving them that fulfillment.
And I think that's one of the benefits of a college education.
So you should transition from having a job to having a career where you have
a vested interest in the processes and the outcomes other than the paycheck.
And one thing I think that we're kind of skirting around is the idea of innovation.
So critical thinking is what allows us to innovate, but it is like you
mentioned before, reflection is not built into any curriculum, right?
And for a lot of us who teach a lot of us teach the way that we were taught
and we weren't taught to ask a student, 'You just learned a lot of chemistry and
you're supposed to be in a biology class.
How do you feel about that?' We're we're not We're not taught to do that.
So it requires us to be innovative ourselves in order to train our
students to be innovative, right?
Because that's where innovation comes from reflection.
And you're right, Jeff.
It's a hugely important skill that we should just as human beings be able to
better, um, like delineate the stages.
Stage zero reflector, your stage two reflector, right?
And if you do a X, Y, and Z, you'll can level up, right?
Your reflection ability is really important.
I mean, maybe it doesn't even have to be so sequential, you know,
but I think that for us not having even the sophistication level to have.
You know, a discussion where we can just say, Oh, okay.
You know, I see that you are, you know, you're able to reflect in
this way, which is very powerful.
And when you combine it with this other kinds of reflection, this is where
a really confident, you know, like a really cool, like you are, you're
going to be really good at the, the, you know, creative, you know, you,
you'd be a great screenwriter and, and, and, and, and, and, and, uh, you know,
and a playwright, et cetera, right.
Could I just say, um, I think the other thing too, that the Liberal Arts
provides is imagination and possibility of other ways of looking at the world.
I mean, I just have to sort of bring up a topic that I've just listened to.
Um, a book called 'The Sea People - The Puzzle of Polynesia.' And one of the
things that blew, my mind is the way, um, these peoples were able to navigate
the sea, not with a single chart, looking at stars, looking at swells, looking at
birds and, you know, and it's, you know, and they were mentioning this, um, 18th
century priest who sailed with cook named to Paya and he did a map and they're
like, it doesn't look like any map.
That is actually readable because he used the positionality of a Polynesian
where they were sort of jumping from island to island and using sort of
different modalities of thinking, right, in order to be able to navigate.
And I love that as a metaphor for the Liberal Arts too, right, about
both us as how could we spark that imagination and what could come up.
As a result of it, right?
I mean, it's just a different way of viewing.
It's a different way of seeing the world.
It's a different, it's a different empathy.
It's a different feeling, you know, and I just want to, I mean,
again, any opportunity now I have to bring up the Polynesians.
I'll take it, but I do think it works really well as a metaphor here.
I think that's so beautiful.
And by the way, this idea of empathy.
Making meaning, you know, finding passion, et cetera.
It, you know, to me is, you know, it's one of those, um, one of those things
that humans are privileged to have, you know, like we, we have a lot of choices.
In life and we get to develop passion about something and we get to have
that sense of fulfillment by if we can identify it, we can go for it and it
would be the best feeling one can have.
And it also includes things like, you know, doing things for your family,
doing things for your loved ones, doing things for your friends, right?
These things don't give you a paycheck necessarily in and of itself,
in most cases, at least, right?
But they are things that we do, and as humans, we actually, that's a privilege.
That's something that we, we get to do, and it's something that, um, you
know, um, uh, It doesn't matter whether you're, you're, it, it, it, it, there's
no, um, uh, stock market for it.
There's no, um, corporate tax on this.
There's no, there's, there, there's no, that you do it for
just a pure joy of doing so.
And I feel like that.
In education, um, it's, it's important for us to think about that being like,
that can't not be one of the goals, you know, for our students to, to, to
be there, to be at that, to have that sort of, to be able to enjoy that.
Um, and I, I do think that it really, to me, I, I, I have, I have so much respect
for, for all the fields, by the way.
So I, I mean, it, it almost sounded like the, I'm like beating up on,
Hey, if you want to be a nurse.
Don't do that because that's just a skill.
No, actually, I think that people that do it is because they have that passion,
you know, but it would be terrible in my mind for someone that don't have that
passion and then they do it because they heard it's a good way to get a paycheck.
And then when they do that job.
They do do get that paycheck and, and I'm sure you can train them to the
level where they can do it, but they are just going to be unfulfilled.
They're doing this where they really want, they really want to be as an
athlete or to be a painter or to be a writer or to be something else,
to be a communicator, you know?
Yeah, no.
And I mean, you have people like Abraham Verghese, who, um, you know, doctor.
And an incredible writer, you know, first book about his experience working with
AIDS patients in Tennessee in the 1990s.
And then he writes some incredible novels where he could straddle that line
between, you know, science, you know, hardcore science as a very, I mean, well
known and quite sort of renowned doctor.
And at the same time, An incredible writer.
And those are, you know, multiple identities that our students already have.
And it's a question of, again, how do they, I think, establish new ones and keep
adding to them and that they don't have to be defined by discipline, right, right.
So that, you know, There there's multiple ways of being that you
can be the same body, right?
You know, I usually, you know, say to students, you can be interested
in science and in art and in history.
It doesn't have to be one or the other.
It's possible to have multiple interests.
You know, you talked about Leonardo da Vinci earlier.
to be a painter who's interested in anatomy and physics and engineering,
and it's possible to be that person.
You know, when we, when I conceived of this project, part of, of what I
was pushing back against is, you know, students come into the college and they
have to pick a major and Liberal Arts became the place that you went if you
weren't sure what you wanted to be.
And that was somehow a bad thing.
All right.
So.
People who want to be nurses or engineers or any of the really
well defined programs, fine.
You're not quite sure yet what you want to do.
Okay, go into Liberal Arts and figure it out, and then you'll
switch into something else.
And we wanted to position the Liberal Arts major as an end in
itself, as a good thing to be.
And we, we, you know, going back to the template, this idea
of helping students recognize.
The value that Liberal Arts Um, has in and of itself.
Yes, it gives you all these skills.
But yes, just being a creative, curious person is a great thing
to be and just as great as being a nurse or an engineer or or a doctor.
And, um, and also just even to say to students studying the Liberal
Arts open so many pathways to you.
You can still be creative.
the engineer or the nurse or, or the doctor having studied Liberal Arts.
But think about how much better you will be because you, you understand
more about people and cultures.
If you're a healthcare professional who understands, you know,
more about different cultural backgrounds of your patients, just
how much better the standard of care you could, you could offer.
So we really wanted to make sure that students realize the value.
Of the Liberal Arts for them, whatever pathway they eventually chose.
I love that, Dionne.
Um, by the way, uh, Demetri, you know who else also is a fantastic
writer, but also a physician?
It's, um, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Who wrote Sherlock Holmes.
True.
You are still watching movies on Sherlock Holmes today.
And that was written in the Late 1800s, right?
I think it's late 1800s.
It was written.
And so, so, you know, this is, these are, in other words, these are not new ideas.
We have amazing people in our history that we can look back in and say, wow,
you know, these things happened, right?
But, but how are we so, um, you know, how are we, how are we missing
these really important pieces?
And I'm so glad that you You know, beyond your program have taking a,
uh, taking this so seriously and going, hold on a minute, you know,
we've got to, we've got to make, make this a possibility for people.
Now I want to maybe, um, um, we'll, we'll wrap up in a minute, but I
wanted to talk a little bit about.
What you see, and this is something that, you know, you might have some anecdotes
or you might have some students as examples, or just, you know, in general,
your students going through this program, they're creating these portfolios,
they're doing these reflections.
Can you give us some sort of like example, some colors on what are
the results like has have there have students, you know, gone through this
and going, wow, this changed my life or.
Wow.
And now I do this and that, um, like, can you give us a little bit of that?
So that people like, I think that there's still this like illusion
that, well, if you're starting to become a mechanic, you can fix it.
Um, okay.
Like we got that.
Um, if you studied.
Liberal Arts.
What are the results?
And I'm talking about both the tangible, like, Hey, maybe, you know,
what jobs or what fields can they go into, but also like, what else
does it, does it come with that?
We just, that, that correspond to what we've been talking about,
I think for me, um, I said before that I teach first year seminar and first
year seminar is where we introduce the Liberal Arts Corey portfolio to students.
And for me, yeah.
What I love is students begin to see themselves as whole individuals.
They begin to understand that When I'm exploring my major, I'm
exploring the world and I'm exploring myself so that they begin to make
internal and external connections.
So then, you know, the reflect is, of course, prompted by
reflection, but the imagination in.
The innovation I can see sparked in students.
So, when we talk about things that students don't expect to hear about,
because in my case, they're science majors, it's like a flower opening up.
It's a really beautiful process.
You feeling okay, Tonya?
Feel free to take your time.
You choked up there, really, thinking about your students, I think.
For those who are listening, Tonya, I think, choked on a little bit of water,
so she'll be back with us in a minute.
But I could see how it's getting.
You know, I can also, yeah, you know, I think about the student
last year who was the representative for our graduating class.
And.
That was one of those experiences as an educator where you really say, Yes,
this is this is what we're striving for.
She was a student who graduated from our Liberal Arts, social
science and humanities major, and she was transferring.
to become a biology major.
And I was just like, wow, this is exactly what I want to happen.
I want a student to realize that no pathway is closed off to them
because they chose the Liberal Arts.
And so she was going from a non STEM major into a STEM major.
And she talked about, she was interviewed by, um, the university,
um, student life office.
And she talked about, how valuable she found the Liberal Arts program at
LaGuardia in exposing her to different ideas across different disciplines.
And I said, Yes, this is my perfect graduate.
This is what I hope to accomplish that here we have a student who
could without any prompting from us.
I had no idea she was doing this interview until I saw it published that
she could talk so fluently about how exposure to multiple ideas in multiple
courses across the Liberal Arts major was really valuable to her development.
And she could then transition from this major into being a biologist because
having experienced all the different, um, disciplines that we introduced her
to, she could settle on, okay, yes, this is the one that inspires my passions
and makes me want to, to learn more.
And I hope she never loses that in whatever it is that she eventually,
you know, lands on in her career.
Um, I could also tell the story, because I was trying to think, because I have
not taught, um, well, upper level, 200 level courses in a while, LaGuardia.
But I actually had, um, a scenario this past, um, summer where I had a student
who was finishing her associate's degree.
At, um, at LaGuardia in deaf, in, um, deaf studies.
It's a Liberal Arts concentration, right?
So it's a Liberal Arts degree.
And, you know, she's like, you know, I need to finish, I'm going to, you
know, finish the degree to Oklahoma.
So she took it as an opportunity to, you know, come here and we started talking.
And like I said to her, well, what are you going to do when you go back to Oklahoma?
She's like, well, I want to be a translator.
I'm like, yeah, is that it?
You know, she was telling me the story how every Sunday she was going to a, um,
uh, a church with, um, deaf congregants.
And I was like, let me tell you, girl, if you were going to write a master's thesis,
A sociological thesis on religion and the deaf community, I would read it, right?
And she's like, I'd never thought about that.
I mean, you know, it opens up possibilities instead of saying, okay,
I'm going to be a deaf translator.
Well, how could you engage with the world and understand it in
ways that you never thought?
possible.
And that's just one small example, but I mean, you know, she wrote me a
lovely letter saying, Oh, thank you so much that, you know, class that she was
literally taking in her last semester, all of a sudden opened her eyes.
Like, I wish I knew this at the very beginning.
And yet I hope again, there was that little sort of, as we say, imagination
and possibility that the Liberal Arts provides in that one student.
That is so lovely.
Um, Well, I, I feel like that's, first of all, let's try to invite some of these.
Students and graduates so that we can have more conversations with them as well.
So we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna talk to them too.
And we're gonna, you know, so the people can, can see from your
perspective, how you think about it, but also from their perspective, right?
Um, I think that would be a great, um, some great follow up conversations
that we should, we must have.
Uh, but I also want to just say how grateful I am that you
three are here to share these.
Different perspectives and how grateful again and thankful that I am to have
the opportunity to work with you all and seeing what you're able to, to
accomplish, uh, with your students.
These are like really very seriously inspiring highlights and, and I, um, I
am, uh, I am just so, um, amazed by the continuous drive to continue to do that.
And I think it's because your institution has that Liberal Arts,
um, foundation as driven by that.
I think you had mentioned earlier from Gail Mello, who my met years ago.
And she's amazing.
She has created this amazing culture there.
And, and you all think in this way.
Um, and I, I just, I just love that, um, for folks who don't know, um enough
about LaGuardia Community College, please Google them, check them out.
Um, they, this is what a wonderful institution, um, and for folks who,
um, who, um, are not, who, who may not have been exposed to what Liberal
Arts education can do for you.
Um, check out that paper, you will see, you know, I think you'll be inspired
just like I did, even though it's a, it's really written as an academic paper.
I think I thought it was, um, you know, suitable for anyone to read.
Um, uh, you may not, you know, need to read every little piece of it.
It's a long paper, but there will be enough that you'll get a lot out of it.
Um, and, and this stuff that, you know, Dionne and Tonya, and Demetri are sharing.
They're not just, you know, things that are, you know, just nice
to have, and they just happen to do it for fun, for no reason.
You know, this is backed by lots of research, lots of efforts, and huge
amount of commitment by dedicated people who have found their meanings.
The life and have, have dedicated that purpose to building these so that
other people can enjoy it as well.
And so I hope that you all go in and check this out and congratulations
again for all your successes.
I, and I hope that we get to talk again soon and we'll get some of
your students and graduate to come on this and then we'll have you guys to
come on this afterwards as well, and then, and then see how they all go.
Okay.
We'll, we'll keep, keep in touch.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having us.
Here's a preview of what's coming up next in part two of my conversation with Tonya
Hendrix, Demetri Kapetanakos, and Dionne Miller from LaGuardia Community College.
So being able to question and really choose what is valuable and what
matters is something that Bucknell has really, has allowed me to practice.