Describes a seminar program at the University of Maryland Dental School, which uses books, short stories, and films that integrate human values into dental education, specifically in pediatric dentistry, for residents, clerks, and faculty. Results of initial evaluation and changes in the program over time are detailed. (DB)

Raphi Amram, the late director of Israel's Society for Excellence Through Education, founded the Ethics in Science and Humanities Program operating in Israel and five other countries. Though the ethics program currently operates only in high schools serving high-achieving or gifted students, founders emphasize the universality of its appeal.…

Describes experiences at Western Illinois University where faculty members in the humanities have developed a successful approach to assessing general education learning in the humanities. The approach (CATS, or classroom assessment techniques) stresses faculty participation and collaboration. A table lists assessment techniques for nine…

Discusses the challenges faced at Western Illinois University to develop a general education assessment framework in the humanities. Stresses the importance of interpretation in all the humanities, assessment goals that focus on students' understanding of humanistic discourse, and ability to use at least one discipline's mode of interpretation and…

Describes problems faced in an interdisciplinary course taught by the authors on major 19th and 20th century figures and ideas in the humanities (literature, music, art, and philosophy). Tells how they refashioned it to focus on depth rather than breadth. Offers some hard-won insights and advice for those embarking on interdisciplinary teaching.…

A study to determine the value to humanists of a thesaurus integrating free-text terms from the humanities and social sciences found a high degree of overlap, suggesting that such a thesaurus would be useful to scholars in both disciplines. Results also demonstrated that combining controlled vocabulary and free-text term searching yielded more…

Literary inquiry has been a part of the curriculum at many North American medical schools for more than 30 years. Ostensibly its original purpose was to humanize the overstuffed, science-based curriculum. Since then, other rationales for its place in the curriculum have appeared, including, among others, translating critical reading skills to…

Policy conceptualizations of the global knowledge economy have led to the channelling of much Higher Education and Research and Development funding into the priority areas of science and technology. Among other things, this diversion of funding calls into question the future of traditional humanities and creative arts faculties. How these…

This paper argues that the diverse curriculum reform agendas associated with science education are strongly and critically associated with the educational characteristics of the humanities. The article begins with a survey of interpretations of the distinctive contribution which the humanities make to educational purposes. From this survey four…

Despite the belief that liberal learning is a necessary component of the professional nursing student?s education, the scientific focus has held prominence in nursing education (Valiga and Bruderle 1997). In the twenty first century, thoughtful linking of liberal learning to professional nursing education takes on renewed urgency. As early as the…

In 1986, while still at Harvard, I started teaching summer school at the Bread Loaf School of English, the graduate program in English of Middlebury College. Bread Loaf offers courses in literature, theater, and writing--here I fit in. I came to that job with a background in applied linguistics and cognitive development, but not in literature, and…

This essay addresses the education of intelligence or the word in the philosophy of Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), and the instruction of the spirit in the art of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), so as to clarify human existence in its wholeness or totality. Jaspers and Matisse reject the split between the word and the spirit, and instruct that the way to…

Transdisciplinarity has been a veritable mantra, especially in the humanities and social sciences, for twenty years or more. Yet academic structures and research application requirements still struggle to come to grips with cross-boundary research and teaching. Making universities more trans-discipline-friendly is a tricky task, however. As Wendy…

This article reports on an experimental scheme in adult education designed for people with curiosity about, but limited formal education in, science. It is offered within a department of humanities and focuses on "ideas" drawn from science, rather than on facts, phenomena or formulae. It involves different approaches to teaching,…

Potential applicants for postgraduate courses in librarianship and information science (LIS) have always had to consider how they would finance their studies. This paper examines how the funding axis for such courses has changed and how applicants from the UK are now looking to employers to fund courses rather than seeking support from national…