The Wackerle Corner:
Applying your liberal arts education

By: Andrea Emery
News Editor

Today’s employers want workers who adapt well to change, communicate effectively, use critical and analytical thinking techniques to solve complex problems and interact constructively with others in the work place.

As Monmouth College students, you spend four years developing these precise skills. According to the Monmouth College web site, “As a community of learners we strive to create and sustain an environment that is value-centered, intellectually challenging, aesthetically inspiring, and culturally diverse; and we hold as central our commitment to liberal arts education and to one another.”

In your freshman year, you read, analyze, ask questions, challenge ideas and begin to build the liberal arts skills that you will carry with you through life. Four years later, you are graduating from the liberal arts experience and beginning the rest of your life. You must now connect the dots. It is time to put to use the skills you have worked so hard at fine-tuning. It is time to begin marketing your liberal arts experience.

As liberal arts students, you have learned to research, write and discuss important topics. You have read, thought and discussed important issues concerning today’s world. You are well-prepared for the future ahead of you no matter what it may hold.

As you continue on your journey at Monmouth College, keep in mind that the value of a liberal arts education is more than just the money you will make upon graduation. Liberal arts graduates are equipped with the skills to become valuable community members. They understand problems, generate solutions and communicate those solutions to others.

In many ways, a liberal arts education is education for life:it prepares graduates who can adapt and thrive in an ever-changing world. The job market may boom and recess, but being taught to think for yourself will never disappear.