Fall 06 (pdf) - University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

An Essential Education
Liberal studies key for professional success.
By Natalie Johnson
A UW Oshkosh nursing student takes a theatre
class. A business major wants to brush
up on water-quality issues. A future middle
school math teacher signs up for a semester
of creative writing.
These are not trivial pursuits, according
to leaders in higher education who track
trends in America’s workforce.
“Increasingly in our knowledge-based
society, the need for employees to
be broadly educated and creative,
critical thinkers is crucial,” said
UW Oshkosh Chancellor Richard
H. Wells. “Employees need
to know how to research problems
and challenges in their
fields and to come up with
innovative solutions.”
UW Oshkosh’s Career Services
director Ted Balser
tells students they need
to think about education
for a lifetime. His advice
is based on projections
that half the jobs
in the next 10 years
haven’t even been
invented yet.
No matter the degree, UW
Oshkosh graduates should
be able to describe themselves
as Balser does on his
own business card: Explorer,
Strategist, Problem Solver.
“Knowing how to communicate
in broad, varied ways Richard Wells
has become essential as
cultures of the world become more interconnected,”
Wells said. “Public school classrooms
across the nation are becoming more
diverse; nurses are serving patients with a
broad range of backgrounds; and businesses
are going global.”
UW Oshkosh students in the professional
colleges of Business, Education and Human
Services and Nursing must learn
how to connect and compromise in the
workplace with people who have a plethora
of cultural and individual differences. These
skills come not from the content courses in
their major but rather from a solid foundation
in the arts, humanities and sciences
garnered from their general education
requirements.
“It’s really about learning to live in a world
that is shrinking,” Balser said.
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