May 9, 2025 • 35 mins
In this episode, I continue my coverage of the NACE Career Readiness Competencies. The focus here is Critical Thinking, which is a very broad topic so conversations can cover a wide range. To help me with this conversation, I needed someone who oversees something that is also broad in scope, which caused me to look at the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. At South Dakota State University, the college encompasses 7 different schools with a wide range of disciplines and degrees. Who better to help me discuss critical thinking than the person who oversees this college? Dr. David Earnest, who currently serves as the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, joined me to explore the topic of critical thinking and he provides many good items to consider. Dr. Earnest is an accomplished scholar, educator and administrator. I’m sure you will find his thoughts helpful, and I hope you take a moment to reflect on his comments.
Links of Interest:
South Dakota State University College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]Welcome to you. Career connections. I'm your host, Kevin Fullerton. In this episode, I continue my coverage of the Career Readiness conferences.
The focus here is critical thinking, which is a very broad topic, so conversations can cover a wide range.
To help me with this conversation. I needed someone who oversees something that is also broad scope.
(00:24):
So I turned to Doctor David Earnest, who currently serves at the dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences,
which is a college that encompasses several different schools and a wide range of disciplines and degrees.
Doctor earnest is an accomplished scholar, educator, and administrator.
I'm sure you'll find his thoughts helpful, and I hope you take a moment to reflect on his comments.
(00:51):
Hello, David. Thank you so much for connecting, uh, with me on the Career Connections podcast.
Good morning. Kevin. Thanks for having me.
But, uh, okay, so you're going to join me to explore the topic of critical thinking, which is, uh, you know, a big topic.
There's books on critical thinking, there's classes, there's all that.
So we're going to try and convince our thoughts and do a sort of a 30 minute episode here.
(01:13):
But, uh, I want before we do that, I want to just provide you an opportunity to kind of give us some background on yourself.
Yeah. Kind of how you got to South Dakota State and then just what you are thinking about with critical thinking.
Yeah. Thank you. Uh, Kevin, I think a lot about critical thinking because as you and I have discussed,
this is a skill that employers increasingly want to see in graduates from South Dakota State and in early career professionals.
(01:40):
And so that's something that's an idea that's really central to my work as Dean.
Um, I am the dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Sdsu.
Um, but my background is in political science. I'm trained as a political scientist.
I started my career, uh, actually working in, uh, the nonprofit sector in Washington, DC in the mid 90s.
(02:01):
Uh, and I was I was what we call a career switcher. Uh, and in my mid 20s, I decided I wanted to become an academic.
So, uh, I went back and got a PhD, and I've been in higher ed, uh, in teaching in various capacities since the late 1990s.
So over 25 years now. Okay.
And for that reason, uh, as a teacher and as a scholar, um, you know, critical thinking has been, uh, not just a skill that I practice,
(02:26):
but something that I felt a lot about in the classroom and how we can inculcate that skill in our students.
Yeah. Great. Okay. So when we think about critical thinking, how how do you define that or what what are some sort of key aspects of that.
So as you noted in your introduction, it's a very broad concept. And um, there are ideas about what is critical thinking that range from, you know,
(02:48):
the cognitive sciences and neuroscience to philosophy and epistemology.
It's a very, very vast, uh, topic that's that's difficult to, to categorize or to define.
Personally, I think of criticism as a method of inquiry.
That's a term that obviously we use in our everyday language.
Um, you know, somebody is being critical or somebody is, you know, offering constructive criticism.
(03:10):
You know, criticism is simply a method of inquiry where you evaluate the merits and the flaws of an idea or a thought or an argument.
And so this, this idea of it's an a value would have skill that focuses on merits and flaws.
So criticism is not necessarily only a negative thing.
(03:30):
Uh, we tend to think of criticism as being focused on the negative.
Uh, but equally important to critical thinking is assessing the merits and strengths and positive aspects of an idea.
And as a method of inquiry. That's I think that's the foundation on which I start.
And, um, that's a foundation on which we can build a whole range of analytical skills that serve students not merely in their careers,
(03:54):
which, of course, is what we're talking about,
but also in in just the quality of their life and their daily experience with, um, their communities and with the arts and,
and other aspects of what makes a person a fully formed, civically engaged individual.
Yeah. Great. Thanks. Thanks for that. I, I do think about, um, and thanks for calling out the use of the word critical and criticism in,
(04:18):
you know, our common sort of conversations we think about that is, is a value judgment.
But we're talking more the evaluative process of of questioning.
And yeah, when I think about critical thinking, I think about taking time to question.
I think question is kind of the key word that kind of pops this I could imagine,
like a word cloud, you know, where words are larger the more they use the right word.
(04:42):
Question really kind of comes in in the mind for me. Um.
So. Yeah. Thank you. Um. How so?
Okay. How do we expand our capacity then for critical thinking?
Like what? What does that. Just magically taking a class as a match.
You know, make you better critical thinker. Yeah.
(05:05):
Critical. Critical thinking is a skill that that one. It's much like, uh, say learning a foreign language.
Uh, just for background, I studied French when I was in high school and in college, and, and, uh,
it was something that I enjoyed studying, but it's a skill that that atrophies if I don't use it.
So I can go to Paris and I can speak a few, uh, a few words these days, but by no means are my fluent.
(05:28):
And that's simply because I don't practice French every day.
And you think critical thinking is similar? It's a set of skills that one has to practice and develop over the course of a lifetime.
So it's really a lifelong learning habit.
And, uh, just like other skills, one never fully masters it, but one, uh, aspires to mastery.
(05:52):
And that that process of aspiring to mastery, uh, really challenges oneself to be, uh, to practice these skills every day.
And so, um, I think part of it is just a habit.
It one develops a habit of critical thinking that you're practicing every day.
And once you have that habit, um, there are ways and skills and techniques that, that we can use as educators,
(06:13):
but that people can use as individuals to really strengthen their critical thinking.
And I want I want to touch on one idea that you mentioned in your question just a moment ago.
Um, there's this presupposition that critical thinking is an individual skill, which it partly is.
Right. So it's a skill that we practice ourselves. But just like French, I can't learn French by speaking to the mirror.
(06:37):
Right? Yeah. Um, it's a skill that one has to, to practice in, uh, communion with others, in practice with others.
And so I think part of the critical thinking skill and part of developing the practice of critical thinking is not only that,
that foundation of practicing it every day,
but practicing it in partnership or in in community with others who are likewise practicing critical thinking skills.
(07:03):
And for you and me in higher ed, that's easy, right?
Yeah, that's part of our work. That's that's the community in which we belong.
Um, we are embedded in a community of students and colleagues and friends and staff, all of whom practice these skills daily.
Um, and I think in a workplace it's a different set of practices, but nonetheless,
(07:26):
it is a practice that's done in partnership or in collaboration with others.
Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah. I like, um, I like thinking about that a lot in terms of the value of community,
in terms of this, this development as a skill and at a practice for sure.
So this episode is part of a series where I'm talking about the career readiness competencies.
(07:49):
And, you know, it's self-awareness, career development.
It's, uh, communication. Critical thinking is a big part of that.
Professionalism, leadership, technology. Uh, teamwork.
Um. And they all have these individual characteristics.
Right. But they're they're really intertwined.
And so can you speak to the importance of having a high level of critical thinking in terms of understanding your own?
(08:16):
Uh, functionality is being career ready and, uh, like a professional.
Yeah, that that's a really interesting question.
Let me back up by talking about my experience as Dean, because as I noted, uh, I'm a political scientist by training,
but the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences is a very, very broad college.
(08:36):
And we have, uh, everything from, uh, choral music and theater to architecture and graphic design to, uh, economics and leadership.
Um, it's a very, very broad range of skills, and it's really challenged me.
Given my background, it's really challenged me to understand how other fields think and practice critical thinking.
(09:02):
And, uh, I think that's the crucial part of workforce, um, readiness and professionalism.
You talked about these skills of leadership and communication and collaboration.
Um, it's it's an essential part of critical thinking to me in,
in the workplace is practicing those skills across I'll call them the divides or the differences of background and uh, specialization.
(09:29):
And so I'll, uh, so, so for example, um, music and literature are humanities and the humanities have a different.
Definition of truth, a different understanding of what truth is and how one discovers truth through literature or through music.
(09:50):
That's a very different truth seeking exercise than I do as a social scientist.
And yet there is value and strength in both of those,
because both of those have their own approach to the critical evaluation of merits and flaws and ideas and,
um, to the degree one can practice critical thinking across those differences.
(10:12):
I think that makes them, uh, not only a more productive and engaged worker,
I think it makes them a more valuable contributor to to the workplace or to the community.
And, uh, that's one of the great joys of my work,
is that we get to work with students across those disciplines to really help them understand these critical thinking skills.
Yeah. Yeah. Great.
(10:32):
I think I think the idea of so that kind of, I think builds on this idea of working on this in community with others, too, because, um,
I think about my background as a musician and some great advice that I got as I was developing,
developing my craft was that, uh, I hung out with a lot of little brass players because I was all brass player.
(10:54):
Yeah, but. One of my, uh, mentors.
Advise me wisely. Say, hey, you need to really branch out and hang out with other musicians of other instruments,
because if you're trying to put a band together, you're going to be the trombone player.
You need to understand. What other instrument players are in the area and have a network so you can actually build for the band.
(11:18):
And so this idea of like of building connections across divides, I think is, is so important.
And. It really is easier on our campus in a sense, because we have I feel like we have a lot of programs built in that try to do that.
Yeah. So your example of a band I think is a really interesting one because, um, you know, you think about, um, an orchestra.
(11:43):
Um, I've had the privilege this year of working a bit, both with our orchestral students here and with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra.
Um. Orchestras create these magnificent performances.
They perform symphonies. Um, no one individual in the orchestra knows the entirety of the work, right?
(12:03):
No one individual can perform the entirety of the production.
Um, and yet the orchestra as a community produces something that no one individual can produce.
Right. And so there there is a there is a form of shared collective knowledge.
That emerges from the actions of a bunch of individuals, right?
(12:27):
So, um, it's a fascinating, you know, to me as a social scientist.
It's a it's a fascinating, um, understanding that there exists knowledge and ability in communities that no one individual in the community possesses.
Right, sure. Yeah. And, and and so, um, you know, even even understanding that dynamic,
understanding the relationship between the self and the community and how knowledge, creativity,
(12:53):
production emerges from the community, from the individuals, I think is is a fascinating,
uh, self-awareness and reflective skill that really helps people.
People understand. Yeah. Can we take that maybe a step further than sure?
(13:14):
Think about it. On a campus level, if we think about our students here at South Dakota State.
Um, maybe they're not musicians. Uh, and how do we.
Help them build their capacity for for critical thinking in community.
What are some ways that students can do that on campus? So there are there are pedagogical ways.
(13:35):
That is, there are things we can do in the classroom and teaching. But I think beyond that, there are student life, uh, skills that we can develop.
So we can we can encourage students to engage in activities that really strengthen their critical thinking skills,
and often in ways that that they may not be fully aware of.
So, um, you know, in, in the classroom,
(13:56):
I think there are active learning exercises and there are practices that we can do that can really help students
think about their critical thinking skills and think about how those skills relate to work with others.
So I'll give one example. Um, and you mentioned your background as a musician and some good advice that you received.
You know, I and when I was in graduate school,
(14:18):
one of my mentors had a teaching exercise that was really fundamentally an exercise in critical thinking skills.
And his exercise he called of what is this, an instance?
And the the exercise was we take a piece of news on any given day.
We just take a piece of news, we'd read it and we'd say, what is this an instance of?
(14:39):
What does this news tell us about the world or about the material that we're studying?
And so it was an exercise in taking a specific item and trying to think more generally about how that idea applies to theory or to,
um, epistemology or to the discovery that we're practicing.
(15:00):
And it was a it was a conversational exercise where all of us in the classroom would take this piece,
and in the sense that we defined it and criticized the piece,
we would find the merits and flaws in this particular piece and ask how this helps us understand the merits and the flaws in theory.
So an important part of this, I think, is active learning, participating in a team, in a group, in a classroom, uh,
(15:28):
setting and developing these communicative skills where together you're working on the assessment, the, uh, evaluation of an idea.
And that's a skill that we practice not only in the classroom, but as you note in student life, that that is a that is an exercise for.
(15:49):
So but you know, my my student experience when I was an undergraduate was journalism.
I wrote for the student newspaper. Uh, journalists don't work in isolation, right?
They work in newsrooms, with colleagues and with editors, and together they practice these critical thinking skills.
Um, I think that's true in other student organizations.
(16:09):
Um, you know, here on campus, we have, um, you know, engineering students who do, you know, who compete in competitions?
Um, we have our jackrabbit forensics team. And so I think the way that we really encourage our students is through engagement,
through student life, through student organizations and activities, because ultimately, um,
when you join, um, a student club,
(16:32):
you are joining a community of people with shared interests who have a shared commitment to that critical discovery process that we're talking about.
And, uh, I think that that that also gets back to this idea of critical thinking as a habit,
something that we practice, um, across the domains of our lives.
If a student is a wonderful critical thinker in, in the classroom.
(16:54):
But then at the end of class goes home and doesn't practice these skills.
But cultivating the lifelong habits that that a critical thinker really needs.
So it's encouraging our students. It's helping them learn how to practice.
Practice critical thinking. Across the hours of the day.
Yeah, yeah. Great. I, I really loved the activity that you shared.
(17:16):
It, it it reminds me of, uh, something I used to do in a previous life.
I taught a community college, and I taught a class called Intro to College Studies.
And, uh, I would start with, like, these little icebreaker kind of activities where I would take sort of like, uh, just a pair of scissors.
And I would have the class brainstorm uses for the scissors and, and, and then and then question those answers.
(17:40):
So for example, somebody would say it's a tool. You know, you use it for, for cutting paper.
Somebody else would say it's a weapon.
And then we would talk a little more about what has happened in your past, make you say it's a weapon, you know,
just explore those kinds of things and then it grows into, okay, let's let's apply that questioning habit into the reading that we did for the day.
Right.
And it just builds and builds and builds and it I think as instructors and professors on campus, we can see that growth and we see that possibility.
(18:09):
And I think it's can be really hard to open students, um, eyes and minds to that.
The fact that it's a process and like, you know,
that that question that always kind of grates on my and my nerves when I hear somebody say, why do I have to take this class?
It's not really important to my job. It's like, uh, you know that.
(18:33):
They really might be. Yeah. Well, and and, you know, you're you're a musician, uh, and, uh, you know,
you and I have been educators for some time now, and I think you and I have both had this experience where, um.
Thanks to our critical thinking practices.
In a piece of art, a piece of music we may discover, meaning that we didn't discover the first time that we heard that piece of music,
(19:01):
or understand the first time we enjoyed that piece of art.
And, um, and so, you know, as you were talking about your exercise with scissors.
Right. The immediate thought I had was that the paintings of Henry Magritte, you know, the French, the French painter who,
you know, the famous, you know, Henry McGriff, they're sort of two of his works that are well known.
(19:23):
You know, one is the man in the bowler hat with the with the apple in front of his face.
Right. Magritte's, uh, paintings were really interrogating the meaning of objects and how we think about and relate to objects.
So the point of the painting was not figurative.
It was not to make sense of what's actually on the canvas, but rather it was to make sense of how we,
(19:47):
our brains, think about the media that's being shared with us.
And it took me many years to understand what Magritte was trying to say.
It took, ah, you know, many years of critical reflection and part of that, you know, your students comment, you know, how does this help me in my job?
Um, I think as part of the challenge, when we talk to young people to help them understand that you may not understand your critical skills,
(20:13):
may not help you unlock the meaning of something immediately.
Right? Part of a critical thinking habit is sitting with the discomfort of not knowing.
Yes, right. Um, and, you know, we I'm going to pull out my phone here.
You know, we live in an era where answers are immediate.
We just pull out a phone and we can go to Wikipedia, or we can use a search engine and we can get answers immediately.
(20:40):
Um, it's hard to sit with the discomfort of not knowing and not understanding.
And I've had experiences where I have not understood something for a decade or two decades.
And then I finally, finally unlock the meaning of that.
And one of the reasons that we unlock the meaning after years is not merely our critical thinking skills, but also life experiences.
(21:10):
Life experiences inform our critical thinking.
And, um, so I'll give an example, um, a music example.
Uh, about ten years ago, I was at a, uh, an outdoor festival, and they were playing music,
and I heard the song once in a lifetime by the Talking Heads.
Okay. This was a song I'd been hearing since the 1980s, when it first came out.
(21:34):
When I was a teenager, I'd heard this song hundreds and hundreds of time.
But for some reason, at that music at that outdoor festival, I finally understood what the song was about.
And I sat there and I said, well, what changed?
How did I suddenly make sense of this song?
(21:55):
How did I finally have the critical insight to understand what it was that David Byrne and the artists who wrote the song were trying to say?
And the only answer I could come up with is I'd lived some years.
I had some life experiences that suddenly now I had some experiential context that helped inform my understanding of the song.
(22:17):
And the song is fundamentally about alienation. Right. It's the lyrics of the song.
You know, David Byrne famously says, this is not my beautiful house, and this is not my beautiful wife.
There's this sense of alienation from your own experience,
and I had to experience a little bit of my own alienation to finally understand what that song was about.
And so, you know, that's the challenge when, you know, when I was 18, I do everything right.
(22:42):
Yeah. Yeah. Right. And, and, uh, and I thought I had all the skills I needed to succeed in the workplace.
And so, uh, I think, you know, part of our duty as educators is to really help our young people understand that it's okay to not understand,
and it's okay to be uncomfortable with it and to encourage them to sit with that discomfort and trust that over time,
(23:06):
their critical faculties will unlock. Yeah, meaning and the insight and the beauty of the ideas that they're wrestling with.
Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. And I didn't expect to talk about music so much with you.
Uh, this episode was great,
but it kind of reminds me this idea of listening to music and your experience changes your your experience with that piece.
(23:29):
And I think about, um, Ornette Coleman s free jazz recording is something that I wrote about my dissertation, and I didn't.
I had listened to it when I was in high school. It didn't. I couldn't really make much sense of it.
But after going through several degrees of music, listening to other, other,
you know, um, compositions from different time periods and studying music intensely,
(23:51):
years later, I come back to that and it has a whole lot more meat to it, because I could hear.
The musicians quoting different composers in their improvizations like, oh my gosh, that's Erik Satie.
I didn't expect to hear quoted in Ornette Coleman. Okay, this is interesting, you know.
Um, so yeah, it is a long can be a long process to answer some of these questions that we have as we develop as professionals and adults.
(24:19):
You know, and I. Yeah. And this is one of the values, I think of music and the values of the humanities.
You know, again, I come from a social science background, so I'm not I'm not deeply trained in the humanities, in the arts.
Uh, but but it's something that I've really grown to appreciate. So let me let me give another example.
Um, suppose I were teaching a class and I wanted to talk to the students about grief.
(24:42):
Right? So grief is a very abstract idea, and it's it's it's one of those ideas that has this curious property that all of us know what grief is.
But we don't know how to define it. Yeah. Uh, and, and, you know, uh, and so.
If I wanted to talk to the students about what is the essence of grief?
(25:05):
And we can we can engage with critical thinking to answer that question.
And we can call on the critical evaluation of a range of scholars.
So maybe we listen to Mozart's Requiem. You know, the Requiem is just this, this beautiful, beautiful lamentation.
Yeah. Uh, that evokes feelings of grief.
(25:27):
Um, or maybe we read the novels of Haruki Murakami.
You know, this Japanese, uh, magical realist novelist who, uh, you know, his is his magnum opus.
Norwegian Wood is really a meditation on the loss of of a woman that he loved.
Um, so, you know, or maybe we sort of study neuroscience in the cognitive sciences,
(25:50):
talk about, you know, sort of the cortisol levels in the brain when we think about grief.
Um, there are many, many different ways to understand a complex idea.
Um, there is no one right answer to what is grief.
Yeah. Um, and, and and and so part of the critical practice is freeing ourselves from the tyranny of believing there is one answer.
(26:16):
And and allowing ourselves to embrace the breadth of answers that the Academy has to offer to those very complex questions about the human experience.
Yeah. Yeah I agree. That's really important to think about.
And that's a that's a really good illustration too, because it is the grief is a universal experience we all go through.
(26:40):
And yet it's hard to define and it's hard to explain until you have gone through it too.
It's hard to explain to somebody who hasn't experienced it. Yeah, yeah.
And which is exactly right. You know, when I was 18, you know, I kind of knew what grief was, but I hadn't really experienced it.
Right. Yeah. And as a middle aged man who has experienced grief now, I've got life experience that I can bring to my engagement,
(27:08):
my critical engagement with other thoughts and other meditations on the meaning of grief.
And, uh, you know, those those again, get to that to the the idea of a lifelong practice and a lifelong rediscovery.
You had this wonderful, um, you know,
reflection a moment ago about engaging with these jazz pieces and rediscovering within them new meanings that you hadn't previously appreciated.
(27:34):
And, uh, one of my favorite novels, I think it's my all time favorite novel is 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia marquez.
And, uh, it's a novel I've reread a dozen times over the years, and every time I pick it up, I discover something new.
Sure. And part of that is, um.
(27:55):
I've lived and I've gained experience. And part of it is my critical skills, you know, just unlock new, new ideas and new meanings.
And that's where the lifelong practice and the lifelong re-engagement with the material or the ideas is so personally enriching for me.
Yeah. Fantastic. I have not read that book.
(28:17):
I should probably pick it up. I'll get you a copy. Okay.
Let's get. Um. Okay, great.
So we've explored, you know, the concept of critical thinking.
Uh, talk a little bit about how students can, um, embrace the idea as a process and different,
different avenues on campus that they can engage with it. Um.
(28:41):
So obviously in classes they work on this skill, whether they're aware of it or not.
Um, developing awareness as part of that critical thinking process.
But what are some other some resources that might come to mind for you in terms of.
Uh, you already mentioned a, uh, particular book,
but maybe some authors that help kind of usher people or shepherd people into thinking about critical thinking,
(29:04):
um, or podcast or, you know, what do you think about in that space?
Yeah, that's a really good question. I will I'll suggest a couple of ideas.
So, um, you know, as I've noted, critical thinking, it's important to practice critical engage,
uh, critical thinking with teams, with student organizations or in the classroom.
(29:25):
Um, but there are things one can do to to enhance critical thinking skills, uh, on their own.
And so certainly, um, uh, you know, I think, you know, reading thoughtful texts is a really useful exercise.
You know, one of the things I do, I'm kind of a puzzle nerd.
Um, I like to work on Sudoku and and like that.
(29:48):
And, um, you know, that's an exercise that that I find, um, just just sort of keeps me sharp and and and helps me, uh, solve problems like that.
Um, but but beyond simple puzzles, I think engaging with, um, interesting riddles or interesting.
(30:09):
Um. Uh, challenges.
Intellectual challenges, I think is a good, uh, a good exercise.
Um. There's there's a, uh, there's there's a wonderful book by, uh, Douglas Hofstadter called this,
published 30 years ago, 35 years ago, called Godel, Escher and Bach.
And it was really sort of, uh,
(30:31):
Hofstadter was was sort of a cognitive scientist who was looking at that sort of three geniuses, Google, Escher and Bach.
And, um, it's a wonderful meditation on how these, these innovators were creative critical thinkers.
Uh, and so I think, I think, you know, thinking about the great minds of history and how they became such engaged,
(30:54):
thoughtful, critical thinkers, I think is a useful exercise as well.
And then circling back to this idea of puzzles. I'll give you one example.
Um. When I. When I discovered this puzzle, uh, it was really you.
You have those sort of eureka moments of discovery that are just so deeply fulfilling.
But this one was particularly meaningful for me. So I grew up in Colorado.
(31:17):
Um, I was born and raised and, uh, like, like many Coloradans, I would go to the mountains and I would ski on the weekends.
And anybody who's been to Colorado to go skiing knows that one of the problems is long lines.
Uh, you're you get to the left and there's a long line.
And so I years later, I read this puzzle about how do you solve the problem of long lines at the ski lift.
(31:43):
And my answer was always, we'll just have the ski lift run faster.
If the ski lift runs faster, more people are getting on quicker. The line goes down.
And and you know, I get to the I get to the left and then I get on the slopes.
But when I read this analysis, I realize that's completely wrong.
The correct answer is if you want shorter lines, you run the ski lift slower.
(32:08):
And I puzzled over this and I said, how could that be?
Well, the answer is, if you think about the the ski slope, it's a closed system with three elements and three elements that you're spending in time.
So one is you're spending time in line. You're spending line and time on the lift.
And you're spending time on the slope. Yeah. Now your time on the slope is the same.
(32:29):
Right. You get to the top of the mountain. You get to the bottom of the mountain. It's the same.
So the only people are your time on the line and time on the lift.
Yeah. Yeah, right. If you slow down the lift, you're spending more time on the lift.
Okay. Yeah. And less time in line. Right.
So it was this wonderful piece of systems thinking.
(32:50):
And this is the idea that cultivated this, that our brains aren't good at thinking about how systems work as a, as a whole.
Are these different elements in a system work? And, and so, um, I, I really have enjoyed reading the literature on systems thinking,
you know, there's, there's a, you know, Melanie Mitchell has written some things on this.
(33:12):
Uh, there's a scholar at, uh, that, uh, I think he's at northwestern.
Um, um, uh, uh, Ori Walensky as his name were re Walensky, uh,
who has written really interesting things on systems thinking and systems thinking are these wonderful
riddles that really challenge your critical capacity to analyze problems and think through solutions.
(33:36):
Great. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. I. The idea of systems thinking is not something that comes easily to you.
And I know that it can be like a real frustration. And so yeah, it's thanks for some recommendations of some authors to explore that.
Yeah. Well, and in fact, there's a lot of research that shows that systems thinking doesn't come easily to most of us.
(33:57):
Um, it, the nature of, of the problem for, for whatever reason, the way that our cognition has developed.
Um, the human brain is just not naturally attuned to these, these kinds of problems.
So it's a skill that that, again, one has to practice and cultivate.
Uh, but but the systems thinking literature is fascinating, right?
(34:19):
Uh. All right. Thanks, David.
I think we could probably talk about this for the rest of the day, but your folks have different things that we need to work on.
But, yeah, we've at least scratched, scratched the surface maybe on this topic a little bit.
And I really appreciate your time and, and, uh, engagement with me on, on this topic.
So thanks so much, David. Yeah. And yeah, thank you, Kevin.
(34:40):
And just so you know, uh, all of us in the college really appreciate the great work that you're doing.
Um, you know, we in the college are committed not just to the academic excellence of our students, but their personal and professional excellence.
Uh, you've been a terrific partner in their professional development.
And we are we are eager to strengthen our partnership with you and support the great work you're doing.
(35:00):
Wonderful. Thank you. All right. Can. Thank you for listening to Career Connections.
Please follow our podcast or your thoughts on other related topics and for topics, suggestions or questions,
you may contact me at Kevin Dot Fullerton at SD state that Edu and for more information about my office please go to careers dot fd state that Edu.
[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]Welcome to you. Career connections. I'm your host, Kevin Fullerton. In this episode, I continue my coverage of the Career Readiness conferences.
The focus here is critical thinking, which is a very broad topic, so conversations can cover a wide range.
To help me with this conversation. I needed someone who oversees something that is also broad scope.
(00:24):
So I turned to Doctor David Earnest, who currently serves at the dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences,
which is a college that encompasses several different schools and a wide range of disciplines and degrees.
Doctor earnest is an accomplished scholar, educator, and administrator.
I'm sure you'll find his thoughts helpful, and I hope you take a moment to reflect on his comments.
(00:51):
Hello, David. Thank you so much for connecting, uh, with me on the Career Connections podcast.
Good morning. Kevin. Thanks for having me.
But, uh, okay, so you're going to join me to explore the topic of critical thinking, which is, uh, you know, a big topic.
There's books on critical thinking, there's classes, there's all that.
So we're going to try and convince our thoughts and do a sort of a 30 minute episode here.
(01:13):
But, uh, I want before we do that, I want to just provide you an opportunity to kind of give us some background on yourself.
Yeah. Kind of how you got to South Dakota State and then just what you are thinking about with critical thinking.
Yeah. Thank you. Uh, Kevin, I think a lot about critical thinking because as you and I have discussed,
this is a skill that employers increasingly want to see in graduates from South Dakota State and in early career professionals.
(01:40):
And so that's something that's an idea that's really central to my work as Dean.
Um, I am the dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Sdsu.
Um, but my background is in political science. I'm trained as a political scientist.
I started my career, uh, actually working in, uh, the nonprofit sector in Washington, DC in the mid 90s.
(02:01):
Uh, and I was I was what we call a career switcher. Uh, and in my mid 20s, I decided I wanted to become an academic.
So, uh, I went back and got a PhD, and I've been in higher ed, uh, in teaching in various capacities since the late 1990s.
So over 25 years now. Okay.
And for that reason, uh, as a teacher and as a scholar, um, you know, critical thinking has been, uh, not just a skill that I practice,
(02:26):
but something that I felt a lot about in the classroom and how we can inculcate that skill in our students.
Yeah. Great. Okay. So when we think about critical thinking, how how do you define that or what what are some sort of key aspects of that.
So as you noted in your introduction, it's a very broad concept. And um, there are ideas about what is critical thinking that range from, you know,
(02:48):
the cognitive sciences and neuroscience to philosophy and epistemology.
It's a very, very vast, uh, topic that's that's difficult to, to categorize or to define.
Personally, I think of criticism as a method of inquiry.
That's a term that obviously we use in our everyday language.
Um, you know, somebody is being critical or somebody is, you know, offering constructive criticism.
(03:10):
You know, criticism is simply a method of inquiry where you evaluate the merits and the flaws of an idea or a thought or an argument.
And so this, this idea of it's an a value would have skill that focuses on merits and flaws.
So criticism is not necessarily only a negative thing.
(03:30):
Uh, we tend to think of criticism as being focused on the negative.
Uh, but equally important to critical thinking is assessing the merits and strengths and positive aspects of an idea.
And as a method of inquiry. That's I think that's the foundation on which I start.
And, um, that's a foundation on which we can build a whole range of analytical skills that serve students not merely in their careers,
(03:54):
which, of course, is what we're talking about,
but also in in just the quality of their life and their daily experience with, um, their communities and with the arts and,
and other aspects of what makes a person a fully formed, civically engaged individual.
Yeah. Great. Thanks. Thanks for that. I, I do think about, um, and thanks for calling out the use of the word critical and criticism in,
(04:18):
you know, our common sort of conversations we think about that is, is a value judgment.
But we're talking more the evaluative process of of questioning.
And yeah, when I think about critical thinking, I think about taking time to question.
I think question is kind of the key word that kind of pops this I could imagine,
like a word cloud, you know, where words are larger the more they use the right word.
(04:42):
Question really kind of comes in in the mind for me. Um.
So. Yeah. Thank you. Um. How so?
Okay. How do we expand our capacity then for critical thinking?
Like what? What does that. Just magically taking a class as a match.
You know, make you better critical thinker. Yeah.
(05:05):
Critical. Critical thinking is a skill that that one. It's much like, uh, say learning a foreign language.
Uh, just for background, I studied French when I was in high school and in college, and, and, uh,
it was something that I enjoyed studying, but it's a skill that that atrophies if I don't use it.
So I can go to Paris and I can speak a few, uh, a few words these days, but by no means are my fluent.
(05:28):
And that's simply because I don't practice French every day.
And you think critical thinking is similar? It's a set of skills that one has to practice and develop over the course of a lifetime.
So it's really a lifelong learning habit.
And, uh, just like other skills, one never fully masters it, but one, uh, aspires to mastery.
(05:52):
And that that process of aspiring to mastery, uh, really challenges oneself to be, uh, to practice these skills every day.
And so, um, I think part of it is just a habit.
It one develops a habit of critical thinking that you're practicing every day.
And once you have that habit, um, there are ways and skills and techniques that, that we can use as educators,
(06:13):
but that people can use as individuals to really strengthen their critical thinking.
And I want I want to touch on one idea that you mentioned in your question just a moment ago.
Um, there's this presupposition that critical thinking is an individual skill, which it partly is.
Right. So it's a skill that we practice ourselves. But just like French, I can't learn French by speaking to the mirror.
(06:37):
Right? Yeah. Um, it's a skill that one has to, to practice in, uh, communion with others, in practice with others.
And so I think part of the critical thinking skill and part of developing the practice of critical thinking is not only that,
that foundation of practicing it every day,
but practicing it in partnership or in in community with others who are likewise practicing critical thinking skills.
(07:03):
And for you and me in higher ed, that's easy, right?
Yeah, that's part of our work. That's that's the community in which we belong.
Um, we are embedded in a community of students and colleagues and friends and staff, all of whom practice these skills daily.
Um, and I think in a workplace it's a different set of practices, but nonetheless,
(07:26):
it is a practice that's done in partnership or in collaboration with others.
Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah. I like, um, I like thinking about that a lot in terms of the value of community,
in terms of this, this development as a skill and at a practice for sure.
So this episode is part of a series where I'm talking about the career readiness competencies.
(07:49):
And, you know, it's self-awareness, career development.
It's, uh, communication. Critical thinking is a big part of that.
Professionalism, leadership, technology. Uh, teamwork.
Um. And they all have these individual characteristics.
Right. But they're they're really intertwined.
And so can you speak to the importance of having a high level of critical thinking in terms of understanding your own?
(08:16):
Uh, functionality is being career ready and, uh, like a professional.
Yeah, that that's a really interesting question.
Let me back up by talking about my experience as Dean, because as I noted, uh, I'm a political scientist by training,
but the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences is a very, very broad college.
(08:36):
And we have, uh, everything from, uh, choral music and theater to architecture and graphic design to, uh, economics and leadership.
Um, it's a very, very broad range of skills, and it's really challenged me.
Given my background, it's really challenged me to understand how other fields think and practice critical thinking.
(09:02):
And, uh, I think that's the crucial part of workforce, um, readiness and professionalism.
You talked about these skills of leadership and communication and collaboration.
Um, it's it's an essential part of critical thinking to me in,
in the workplace is practicing those skills across I'll call them the divides or the differences of background and uh, specialization.
(09:29):
And so I'll, uh, so, so for example, um, music and literature are humanities and the humanities have a different.
Definition of truth, a different understanding of what truth is and how one discovers truth through literature or through music.
(09:50):
That's a very different truth seeking exercise than I do as a social scientist.
And yet there is value and strength in both of those,
because both of those have their own approach to the critical evaluation of merits and flaws and ideas and,
um, to the degree one can practice critical thinking across those differences.
(10:12):
I think that makes them, uh, not only a more productive and engaged worker,
I think it makes them a more valuable contributor to to the workplace or to the community.
And, uh, that's one of the great joys of my work,
is that we get to work with students across those disciplines to really help them understand these critical thinking skills.
Yeah. Yeah. Great.
(10:32):
I think I think the idea of so that kind of, I think builds on this idea of working on this in community with others, too, because, um,
I think about my background as a musician and some great advice that I got as I was developing,
developing my craft was that, uh, I hung out with a lot of little brass players because I was all brass player.
(10:54):
Yeah, but. One of my, uh, mentors.
Advise me wisely. Say, hey, you need to really branch out and hang out with other musicians of other instruments,
because if you're trying to put a band together, you're going to be the trombone player.
You need to understand. What other instrument players are in the area and have a network so you can actually build for the band.
(11:18):
And so this idea of like of building connections across divides, I think is, is so important.
And. It really is easier on our campus in a sense, because we have I feel like we have a lot of programs built in that try to do that.
Yeah. So your example of a band I think is a really interesting one because, um, you know, you think about, um, an orchestra.
(11:43):
Um, I've had the privilege this year of working a bit, both with our orchestral students here and with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra.
Um. Orchestras create these magnificent performances.
They perform symphonies. Um, no one individual in the orchestra knows the entirety of the work, right?
(12:03):
No one individual can perform the entirety of the production.
Um, and yet the orchestra as a community produces something that no one individual can produce.
Right. And so there there is a there is a form of shared collective knowledge.
That emerges from the actions of a bunch of individuals, right?
(12:27):
So, um, it's a fascinating, you know, to me as a social scientist.
It's a it's a fascinating, um, understanding that there exists knowledge and ability in communities that no one individual in the community possesses.
Right, sure. Yeah. And, and and so, um, you know, even even understanding that dynamic,
understanding the relationship between the self and the community and how knowledge, creativity,
(12:53):
production emerges from the community, from the individuals, I think is is a fascinating,
uh, self-awareness and reflective skill that really helps people.
People understand. Yeah. Can we take that maybe a step further than sure?
(13:14):
Think about it. On a campus level, if we think about our students here at South Dakota State.
Um, maybe they're not musicians. Uh, and how do we.
Help them build their capacity for for critical thinking in community.
What are some ways that students can do that on campus? So there are there are pedagogical ways.
(13:35):
That is, there are things we can do in the classroom and teaching. But I think beyond that, there are student life, uh, skills that we can develop.
So we can we can encourage students to engage in activities that really strengthen their critical thinking skills,
and often in ways that that they may not be fully aware of.
So, um, you know, in, in the classroom,
(13:56):
I think there are active learning exercises and there are practices that we can do that can really help students
think about their critical thinking skills and think about how those skills relate to work with others.
So I'll give one example. Um, and you mentioned your background as a musician and some good advice that you received.
You know, I and when I was in graduate school,
(14:18):
one of my mentors had a teaching exercise that was really fundamentally an exercise in critical thinking skills.
And his exercise he called of what is this, an instance?
And the the exercise was we take a piece of news on any given day.
We just take a piece of news, we'd read it and we'd say, what is this an instance of?
(14:39):
What does this news tell us about the world or about the material that we're studying?
And so it was an exercise in taking a specific item and trying to think more generally about how that idea applies to theory or to,
um, epistemology or to the discovery that we're practicing.
(15:00):
And it was a it was a conversational exercise where all of us in the classroom would take this piece,
and in the sense that we defined it and criticized the piece,
we would find the merits and flaws in this particular piece and ask how this helps us understand the merits and the flaws in theory.
So an important part of this, I think, is active learning, participating in a team, in a group, in a classroom, uh,
(15:28):
setting and developing these communicative skills where together you're working on the assessment, the, uh, evaluation of an idea.
And that's a skill that we practice not only in the classroom, but as you note in student life, that that is a that is an exercise for.
(15:49):
So but you know, my my student experience when I was an undergraduate was journalism.
I wrote for the student newspaper. Uh, journalists don't work in isolation, right?
They work in newsrooms, with colleagues and with editors, and together they practice these critical thinking skills.
Um, I think that's true in other student organizations.
(16:09):
Um, you know, here on campus, we have, um, you know, engineering students who do, you know, who compete in competitions?
Um, we have our jackrabbit forensics team. And so I think the way that we really encourage our students is through engagement,
through student life, through student organizations and activities, because ultimately, um,
when you join, um, a student club,
(16:32):
you are joining a community of people with shared interests who have a shared commitment to that critical discovery process that we're talking about.
And, uh, I think that that that also gets back to this idea of critical thinking as a habit,
something that we practice, um, across the domains of our lives.
If a student is a wonderful critical thinker in, in the classroom.
(16:54):
But then at the end of class goes home and doesn't practice these skills.
But cultivating the lifelong habits that that a critical thinker really needs.
So it's encouraging our students. It's helping them learn how to practice.
Practice critical thinking. Across the hours of the day.
Yeah, yeah. Great. I, I really loved the activity that you shared.
(17:16):
It, it it reminds me of, uh, something I used to do in a previous life.
I taught a community college, and I taught a class called Intro to College Studies.
And, uh, I would start with, like, these little icebreaker kind of activities where I would take sort of like, uh, just a pair of scissors.
And I would have the class brainstorm uses for the scissors and, and, and then and then question those answers.
(17:40):
So for example, somebody would say it's a tool. You know, you use it for, for cutting paper.
Somebody else would say it's a weapon.
And then we would talk a little more about what has happened in your past, make you say it's a weapon, you know,
just explore those kinds of things and then it grows into, okay, let's let's apply that questioning habit into the reading that we did for the day.
Right.
And it just builds and builds and builds and it I think as instructors and professors on campus, we can see that growth and we see that possibility.
(18:09):
And I think it's can be really hard to open students, um, eyes and minds to that.
The fact that it's a process and like, you know,
that that question that always kind of grates on my and my nerves when I hear somebody say, why do I have to take this class?
It's not really important to my job. It's like, uh, you know that.
(18:33):
They really might be. Yeah. Well, and and, you know, you're you're a musician, uh, and, uh, you know,
you and I have been educators for some time now, and I think you and I have both had this experience where, um.
Thanks to our critical thinking practices.
In a piece of art, a piece of music we may discover, meaning that we didn't discover the first time that we heard that piece of music,
(19:01):
or understand the first time we enjoyed that piece of art.
And, um, and so, you know, as you were talking about your exercise with scissors.
Right. The immediate thought I had was that the paintings of Henry Magritte, you know, the French, the French painter who,
you know, the famous, you know, Henry McGriff, they're sort of two of his works that are well known.
(19:23):
You know, one is the man in the bowler hat with the with the apple in front of his face.
Right. Magritte's, uh, paintings were really interrogating the meaning of objects and how we think about and relate to objects.
So the point of the painting was not figurative.
It was not to make sense of what's actually on the canvas, but rather it was to make sense of how we,
(19:47):
our brains, think about the media that's being shared with us.
And it took me many years to understand what Magritte was trying to say.
It took, ah, you know, many years of critical reflection and part of that, you know, your students comment, you know, how does this help me in my job?
Um, I think as part of the challenge, when we talk to young people to help them understand that you may not understand your critical skills,
(20:13):
may not help you unlock the meaning of something immediately.
Right? Part of a critical thinking habit is sitting with the discomfort of not knowing.
Yes, right. Um, and, you know, we I'm going to pull out my phone here.
You know, we live in an era where answers are immediate.
We just pull out a phone and we can go to Wikipedia, or we can use a search engine and we can get answers immediately.
(20:40):
Um, it's hard to sit with the discomfort of not knowing and not understanding.
And I've had experiences where I have not understood something for a decade or two decades.
And then I finally, finally unlock the meaning of that.
And one of the reasons that we unlock the meaning after years is not merely our critical thinking skills, but also life experiences.
(21:10):
Life experiences inform our critical thinking.
And, um, so I'll give an example, um, a music example.
Uh, about ten years ago, I was at a, uh, an outdoor festival, and they were playing music,
and I heard the song once in a lifetime by the Talking Heads.
Okay. This was a song I'd been hearing since the 1980s, when it first came out.
(21:34):
When I was a teenager, I'd heard this song hundreds and hundreds of time.
But for some reason, at that music at that outdoor festival, I finally understood what the song was about.
And I sat there and I said, well, what changed?
How did I suddenly make sense of this song?
(21:55):
How did I finally have the critical insight to understand what it was that David Byrne and the artists who wrote the song were trying to say?
And the only answer I could come up with is I'd lived some years.
I had some life experiences that suddenly now I had some experiential context that helped inform my understanding of the song.
(22:17):
And the song is fundamentally about alienation. Right. It's the lyrics of the song.
You know, David Byrne famously says, this is not my beautiful house, and this is not my beautiful wife.
There's this sense of alienation from your own experience,
and I had to experience a little bit of my own alienation to finally understand what that song was about.
And so, you know, that's the challenge when, you know, when I was 18, I do everything right.
(22:42):
Yeah. Yeah. Right. And, and, uh, and I thought I had all the skills I needed to succeed in the workplace.
And so, uh, I think, you know, part of our duty as educators is to really help our young people understand that it's okay to not understand,
and it's okay to be uncomfortable with it and to encourage them to sit with that discomfort and trust that over time,
(23:06):
their critical faculties will unlock. Yeah, meaning and the insight and the beauty of the ideas that they're wrestling with.
Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. And I didn't expect to talk about music so much with you.
Uh, this episode was great,
but it kind of reminds me this idea of listening to music and your experience changes your your experience with that piece.
(23:29):
And I think about, um, Ornette Coleman s free jazz recording is something that I wrote about my dissertation, and I didn't.
I had listened to it when I was in high school. It didn't. I couldn't really make much sense of it.
But after going through several degrees of music, listening to other, other,
you know, um, compositions from different time periods and studying music intensely,
(23:51):
years later, I come back to that and it has a whole lot more meat to it, because I could hear.
The musicians quoting different composers in their improvizations like, oh my gosh, that's Erik Satie.
I didn't expect to hear quoted in Ornette Coleman. Okay, this is interesting, you know.
Um, so yeah, it is a long can be a long process to answer some of these questions that we have as we develop as professionals and adults.
(24:19):
You know, and I. Yeah. And this is one of the values, I think of music and the values of the humanities.
You know, again, I come from a social science background, so I'm not I'm not deeply trained in the humanities, in the arts.
Uh, but but it's something that I've really grown to appreciate. So let me let me give another example.
Um, suppose I were teaching a class and I wanted to talk to the students about grief.
(24:42):
Right? So grief is a very abstract idea, and it's it's it's one of those ideas that has this curious property that all of us know what grief is.
But we don't know how to define it. Yeah. Uh, and, and, you know, uh, and so.
If I wanted to talk to the students about what is the essence of grief?
(25:05):
And we can we can engage with critical thinking to answer that question.
And we can call on the critical evaluation of a range of scholars.
So maybe we listen to Mozart's Requiem. You know, the Requiem is just this, this beautiful, beautiful lamentation.
Yeah. Uh, that evokes feelings of grief.
(25:27):
Um, or maybe we read the novels of Haruki Murakami.
You know, this Japanese, uh, magical realist novelist who, uh, you know, his is his magnum opus.
Norwegian Wood is really a meditation on the loss of of a woman that he loved.
Um, so, you know, or maybe we sort of study neuroscience in the cognitive sciences,
(25:50):
talk about, you know, sort of the cortisol levels in the brain when we think about grief.
Um, there are many, many different ways to understand a complex idea.
Um, there is no one right answer to what is grief.
Yeah. Um, and, and and and so part of the critical practice is freeing ourselves from the tyranny of believing there is one answer.
(26:16):
And and allowing ourselves to embrace the breadth of answers that the Academy has to offer to those very complex questions about the human experience.
Yeah. Yeah I agree. That's really important to think about.
And that's a that's a really good illustration too, because it is the grief is a universal experience we all go through.
(26:40):
And yet it's hard to define and it's hard to explain until you have gone through it too.
It's hard to explain to somebody who hasn't experienced it. Yeah, yeah.
And which is exactly right. You know, when I was 18, you know, I kind of knew what grief was, but I hadn't really experienced it.
Right. Yeah. And as a middle aged man who has experienced grief now, I've got life experience that I can bring to my engagement,
(27:08):
my critical engagement with other thoughts and other meditations on the meaning of grief.
And, uh, you know, those those again, get to that to the the idea of a lifelong practice and a lifelong rediscovery.
You had this wonderful, um, you know,
reflection a moment ago about engaging with these jazz pieces and rediscovering within them new meanings that you hadn't previously appreciated.
(27:34):
And, uh, one of my favorite novels, I think it's my all time favorite novel is 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia marquez.
And, uh, it's a novel I've reread a dozen times over the years, and every time I pick it up, I discover something new.
Sure. And part of that is, um.
(27:55):
I've lived and I've gained experience. And part of it is my critical skills, you know, just unlock new, new ideas and new meanings.
And that's where the lifelong practice and the lifelong re-engagement with the material or the ideas is so personally enriching for me.
Yeah. Fantastic. I have not read that book.
(28:17):
I should probably pick it up. I'll get you a copy. Okay.
Let's get. Um. Okay, great.
So we've explored, you know, the concept of critical thinking.
Uh, talk a little bit about how students can, um, embrace the idea as a process and different,
different avenues on campus that they can engage with it. Um.
(28:41):
So obviously in classes they work on this skill, whether they're aware of it or not.
Um, developing awareness as part of that critical thinking process.
But what are some other some resources that might come to mind for you in terms of.
Uh, you already mentioned a, uh, particular book,
but maybe some authors that help kind of usher people or shepherd people into thinking about critical thinking,
(29:04):
um, or podcast or, you know, what do you think about in that space?
Yeah, that's a really good question. I will I'll suggest a couple of ideas.
So, um, you know, as I've noted, critical thinking, it's important to practice critical engage,
uh, critical thinking with teams, with student organizations or in the classroom.
(29:25):
Um, but there are things one can do to to enhance critical thinking skills, uh, on their own.
And so certainly, um, uh, you know, I think, you know, reading thoughtful texts is a really useful exercise.
You know, one of the things I do, I'm kind of a puzzle nerd.
Um, I like to work on Sudoku and and like that.
(29:48):
And, um, you know, that's an exercise that that I find, um, just just sort of keeps me sharp and and and helps me, uh, solve problems like that.
Um, but but beyond simple puzzles, I think engaging with, um, interesting riddles or interesting.
(30:09):
Um. Uh, challenges.
Intellectual challenges, I think is a good, uh, a good exercise.
Um. There's there's a, uh, there's there's a wonderful book by, uh, Douglas Hofstadter called this,
published 30 years ago, 35 years ago, called Godel, Escher and Bach.
And it was really sort of, uh,
(30:31):
Hofstadter was was sort of a cognitive scientist who was looking at that sort of three geniuses, Google, Escher and Bach.
And, um, it's a wonderful meditation on how these, these innovators were creative critical thinkers.
Uh, and so I think, I think, you know, thinking about the great minds of history and how they became such engaged,
(30:54):
thoughtful, critical thinkers, I think is a useful exercise as well.
And then circling back to this idea of puzzles. I'll give you one example.
Um. When I. When I discovered this puzzle, uh, it was really you.
You have those sort of eureka moments of discovery that are just so deeply fulfilling.
But this one was particularly meaningful for me. So I grew up in Colorado.
(31:17):
Um, I was born and raised and, uh, like, like many Coloradans, I would go to the mountains and I would ski on the weekends.
And anybody who's been to Colorado to go skiing knows that one of the problems is long lines.
Uh, you're you get to the left and there's a long line.
And so I years later, I read this puzzle about how do you solve the problem of long lines at the ski lift.
(31:43):
And my answer was always, we'll just have the ski lift run faster.
If the ski lift runs faster, more people are getting on quicker. The line goes down.
And and you know, I get to the I get to the left and then I get on the slopes.
But when I read this analysis, I realize that's completely wrong.
The correct answer is if you want shorter lines, you run the ski lift slower.
(32:08):
And I puzzled over this and I said, how could that be?
Well, the answer is, if you think about the the ski slope, it's a closed system with three elements and three elements that you're spending in time.
So one is you're spending time in line. You're spending line and time on the lift.
And you're spending time on the slope. Yeah. Now your time on the slope is the same.
(32:29):
Right. You get to the top of the mountain. You get to the bottom of the mountain. It's the same.
So the only people are your time on the line and time on the lift.
Yeah. Yeah, right. If you slow down the lift, you're spending more time on the lift.
Okay. Yeah. And less time in line. Right.
So it was this wonderful piece of systems thinking.
(32:50):
And this is the idea that cultivated this, that our brains aren't good at thinking about how systems work as a, as a whole.
Are these different elements in a system work? And, and so, um, I, I really have enjoyed reading the literature on systems thinking,
you know, there's, there's a, you know, Melanie Mitchell has written some things on this.
(33:12):
Uh, there's a scholar at, uh, that, uh, I think he's at northwestern.
Um, um, uh, uh, Ori Walensky as his name were re Walensky, uh,
who has written really interesting things on systems thinking and systems thinking are these wonderful
riddles that really challenge your critical capacity to analyze problems and think through solutions.
(33:36):
Great. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. I. The idea of systems thinking is not something that comes easily to you.
And I know that it can be like a real frustration. And so yeah, it's thanks for some recommendations of some authors to explore that.
Yeah. Well, and in fact, there's a lot of research that shows that systems thinking doesn't come easily to most of us.
(33:57):
Um, it, the nature of, of the problem for, for whatever reason, the way that our cognition has developed.
Um, the human brain is just not naturally attuned to these, these kinds of problems.
So it's a skill that that, again, one has to practice and cultivate.
Uh, but but the systems thinking literature is fascinating, right?
(34:19):
Uh. All right. Thanks, David.
I think we could probably talk about this for the rest of the day, but your folks have different things that we need to work on.
But, yeah, we've at least scratched, scratched the surface maybe on this topic a little bit.
And I really appreciate your time and, and, uh, engagement with me on, on this topic.
So thanks so much, David. Yeah. And yeah, thank you, Kevin.
(34:40):
And just so you know, uh, all of us in the college really appreciate the great work that you're doing.
Um, you know, we in the college are committed not just to the academic excellence of our students, but their personal and professional excellence.
Uh, you've been a terrific partner in their professional development.
And we are we are eager to strengthen our partnership with you and support the great work you're doing.
(35:00):
Wonderful. Thank you. All right. Can. Thank you for listening to Career Connections.
Please follow our podcast or your thoughts on other related topics and for topics, suggestions or questions,
you may contact me at Kevin Dot Fullerton at SD state that Edu and for more information about my office please go to careers dot fd state that Edu.
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