Catalog, 1958-1959 - Hoover Library

WeStern Maryland College and
Preparation for a Career
Like most of America's distinguished undergraduate institutions,
Western Maryland a liberal arts college. This means
is
that students do not receive direct training to become bond salesmen,
secretaries, and the like. Rather the liberal arts college
prepares its students for leadership-in business, the professions,
in
the military service, in scientific work, in social and
in
humanitarian activity.
The graduate of the liberal arts college should have a high
of aesthetic and spiritual values, aroused and active social
sense
awareness, above all a well-stocked and well-disciplined mind. He
is able after college to succeed in activity which requires not
merely technical proficiency but perception and judgment, refinement
and social ease, discrimination and taste. He can more do
than hold a job; he can carry out, and often direct, the constructive
work of the world.
Education of this calibre can be assimilated by a high school
graduate of better than average mental promise or by a graduate
of less pronounced intellectual distinction who has extraordinary
determination and self-discipline. Certain career choices, however,
require special abilities, and the material which follows is
intended to make clear some of these requirements as well as
to suggest a few of the principal fields open to graduates of
liberal arts colleges.
THE PROFESSIONS
THE MINISTRY. In addition to the prime requisite of complete
devotion to cause, this calling requires skill and ease in
a
writing and speaking, capacity to absorb general and philosophical
concepts, interest in varied subject matter, sympathy with
people. A good voice and physique are undeniably advantageous.
Preministerial students may major in any department, but the
most commonly chosen are Philosophy and Religion, English,
History, and Sociology. Every year graduates of Western Maryland
enter such seminaries as Boston, Drew, Duke, and Wesley,
the eastern theological schools of the Methodist church,
as well as seminaries of other denominations. The relationship
of the college to the church and the active religious life on the
campus give strong preparation to preministeriaI students.
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