February 19, 2025 • 31 mins
Host Jeff Yan engages in a profound discussion with Tonya Hendrix, Demetrios V. Kapetanakos, and Dionne Miller of LaGuardia Community College.
They referenced the recently published paper in the International Journal of ePortfolio (IJep), which focuses on the value of creating an ePortfolio for a community college's liberal arts identity.
The conversation explores the declining confidence in higher education, the critical role of liberal arts in fostering critical thinking and productive citizenship, and LaGuardia's extraordinary diversity.
This insightful discussion challenges misconceptions about the liberal arts and underscores the transformative power of a diverse liberal education.
Creating an Integrative Student Liberal Arts Identity: A Reflection on the Process of Building an ePortfolio for a Community College Liberal Arts Program: https://dgmg81phhvh63.cloudfront.net/content/user-photos/IJEP/Article-PDFs/4-IJeP-404.pdf
International Journal of ePortfolio: https://www.aacu.org/ijep
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to DigicationScholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Jeff Yan.
In this episode, you will hear Part Oneof my conversation with Tonya Hendrix,
Demetri Kapetanakos, and Dionne Millerfrom LaGuardia Community College.
More links and information about today'sconversation can be found on Digication's
(00:23):
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Full episodes of Digication ScholarsConversations can be found on
YouTube or your favorite podcast app.
Welcome to DigiCationScholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Jeff Yan.
My guests today are Tonya Hendrix,Demetri  Kapetanakos, and Dionne Miller
(00:46):
from LaGuardia Community College.
They are authors of a paperrecently published at the
International Journal of ePortfolio.
The title of this paper is Creatingan Integrative Student's Liberal Arts
Identity, a reflection on the processof building an ePortfolio for a
community college Liberal Arts program.
(01:08):
Welcome, everyone.
And, uh, I want to say, first ofall, I've always been a huge fan and
admirer of LaGuardia community college.
It is just, it's been a, uh, anhonor and a pleasure to have been
able to work alongside folks atLaGuardia throughout the years.
(01:31):
And, uh, I think we've had now somethinglike a 15 year long relationship.
Um, and it's, it's just oneof the highlights of my life.
It's literally, is it's now a. A bigportion of my life and, and it's one that
has been so, um, I'm, I'm continuouslyinspired and impressed by all that you do.
And, and the thing aboutit is it doesn't stop.
(01:53):
It was amazing in thebeginning of that journey.
It is still amazing 15 years later.
And today we have three reallyjust amazing educators here.
Um, so I wanted to just.
Um, maybe go around really quickly,ask you, what do you do at LaGuardia?
Really quickly.
Tell us that maybe starting with Tonya.
(02:13):
Hi everybody.
Um, I currently teach First Year Seminarclasses and Biology classes at LaGuardia.
Great.
And Dionne.
I am an associate dean for academicaffairs and I serve among other
things as the program directorfor the Liberal Arts major.
Awesome.
And Demetri.
(02:35):
So, um, I teach first year seminar, Iteach English classes, and I'm actually
really, really excited because I'mactually teaching Classical Lit in
Homer for the first time to my students,so Sounds fun, and uh And nerdy!
Jeff and I'm sure that I'msure that there you find race.
(02:58):
Well, just having interacted withyou a little bit, I'm sure you find
really good ways to engage withthem, which is a lot of what we're
going to be talking about today.
Um, I, I am so, so impressedby the paper that you wrote.
And I, I remember I w I read it and, and.
(03:18):
It actually co... coincides with alot of how I've been feeling a lot
about, and it really starts with.
Actually, there is a somewhat of a declineconfidence in higher education today in
the higher education landscape, not onlyI'm not talking specifically for, you
know, any kinds of like colleges or, youknow, regions or the, you know, or, um,
(03:44):
you know, uh, but, but more in general,there has been a decline in confidence
in higher education, um, because of asort of a drop in belief that the value
of a degree, what it means, and I thinkthat in your paper it really, you know,
you had said that it, it had literallygone from something like 74 percent to
(04:06):
41%, you know, based on a study and,and that's, that's alarming to me.
Right.
It's alarming to me, by the way, not only,you know, I don't believe that we should
just blindly think that higher educationis, and that the degree is good for you,
but we should realize that if it went from74 percent to 41%, what changed and what,
(04:29):
what could make that be the case, right?
So Dionne, maybe I want to ask you first,as an Associate Dean, you are someone
who, who would be looking at these things.
Both you're thinking about, you know, froma student standpoint, the well being and
all of that, but you're also looking atthe bigger picture of where we're going
(04:50):
as a college, you know, in your program.
So tell me a little bit about whatyou think, what you think when you,
when you discover these numbers.
It's very alarming, Jeff.
I agree.
I believe in the purpose of education,just as not only for the individual,
but also for society at large.
(05:11):
You know, I think apart from givingour students skills so that they
can, um, make progress economically.
That's important.
But we're also giving our studentsskills to make them good citizens.
And when we don't have students in ourclassroom, we don't have a chance to give
them the tools to really allow them tofully participate in their society and to
(05:36):
improve, you know, our role as a species.
overall, um, in the world.
So that really alarms me because, youknow, I think just knowledge is such a
basic fundamental right and something thatall of us should be striving to attain, no
matter what it is that we do in the world.
(05:58):
Yeah.
And Demetri, what does Homer say?
Oh, I don't know.
I mean,
I was actually reading the Iliad yesterdayand it's really, One of the things that I
feel is missing and being at LaGuardia andworking both with people like Dionne and
Tonya is thinking about how could we bereflexive about why all of this matters.
(06:24):
You know, why does theliberal arts matters?
Why do these differentideas swirling around?
Why does this possibly blind poetfrom 8th century Greece still matter?
And they all do.
And I feel that one of the thingsis that we live in a society right
now where this idea of reflection ismissing and we really need to think
(06:46):
about how could we bring that back,not only to social media, not only
into the way we read people, but also.
That the value of an educationis about helping you all do that.
And Tonya, do you see the samething in your, your classes as well?
Absolutely.
Um, I think about students and theirability to, to do critical thinking.
(07:13):
Um, when I teach the scientificmethod, I teach it as evidence
based critical thinking becauseit is, and it's a necessary skill.
Um, so when I think about our students or.
Anybody that I love and care for, whatI want you to be able to do is take the
facts and make them mean something andnot have somebody else do that for you.
(07:38):
So I'm afraid that, you know, Idon't really like to talk about
politics really, but there's thisidea that an educated populace.
It's not good for somebody.
It's obviously good for us ascitizens, but who is it not good for?
And that's something, um, that weshould consider for our students
(08:00):
and help our students to consider.
And, and by the way, um, I wantto, I want to point out something
that I think it's a myth.
I think it's people.
I think people, um, sort of putsthis identity onto folks who are in
(08:21):
the sciences in STEM to think thatthese are people who only likes
to deal with the black and whites.
They do not value reflection.
They think it's too soft.
They think it's too touchy feely.
It is a hundred percent untrue.
We have someone on the panel rightnow who teaches in biology and
then another teaches Homer, right?
And that both of them are talking aboutthe value of reflection and value of
(08:46):
what it means to be a productive citizen.
And these are the kinds of things thatto me, I want to go back to Dionne.
You, you very just succinctly hadsaid right away, we need these
people to become productive citizens.
We want them to have a sense offulfillment and passion in life, right?
To enjoy themselves.
(09:07):
And you don't get to be able to do that.
If all you care about are sort of skillsthat learnable skills that are, you
know, from, um, uh, that, that, that,that seems to satisfy the short term
satisfaction of maybe a job requirement,but that doesn't bring you very far
because that job is going to change.
(09:27):
That job is going toget evolved over time.
Those skills gonna beoutdated very quickly, right?
Many of those skillsare not durable skills.
They are ephemeral.
They are, they're hype.
Half lives are short these days,especially when we encounter AI, right?
Like, like that's going to,that's going to... AI is.
(09:52):
However, we, we look at it, youknow, we like it, we don't like it.
We, we, we, we thinkof it as an assistant.
We think of it as a collaborator, etcetera, et cetera, all the different
metaphors, but what, what is I thinkpretty easily identifiable is that it is.
Extremely studious.
So things that has been published inthe world, things that it has his hands
(10:15):
on, it reads and it consumes everything.
So those kind of first level, I liketo think of it as almost like the
first level learning, which is just,here's some, I hear some, here's
some content, read it, remember it.
And that's it, that AI is going to bereally good at doing, but what I thought
(10:36):
was really amazing with Tonya, when yousaid, well, you need to make that your
own, you have to think through that.
That's where the criticalthinking comes in, right?
So this is where you processthat experience of, Hey!
I experienced some fact.
And if you can experience it even betteris even better than reading about it, then
(10:56):
the process of doing that, like dealingwith the experience seems to really
be the building block of the criticalthinking and, and, and the purpose and
all of that, that you would talk about.
I, I, I got so much out of your paper andI wanted to then say, um, now I, I, and
I, I sometimes find that at LaGuardia.
(11:19):
Um, I'm always amazed by howincredibly diverse your demographic is.
Um, you, and, and that might,to me, it sometimes feel like
as people that work there, youmust have almost like no choice.
Even if you wanted to, but to embrace thatdiversity, and then you can really use it.
(11:45):
And I actually do think that itis a special, um, scenario where
actually there are a lot of collegesdon't have, and therefore they don't
truly understand what that means.
So maybe one of you can tell us a littlebit about like, what does it mean by like,
you know, dive in a diverse demographic.
(12:08):
Um, I, I remember, I will just use onething that I remember hearing about.
I think LaGuardia, there are somethinglike over 150 languages spoken
amongst your population, right?
That's incredible.
That, that's really swell.
Suddenly it puts you into a perspectivethat says, Oh man, I don't even know.
How to name 150 languages.
(12:31):
Um, and, and that there are that manyjust within the, you know, on campus.
And so why don't you tell us alittle bit about, you know, sort of
where LaGuardia is right now on thedemographic, just, you know, ballpark.
I'd like to say what's fantasticabout being in such a diverse
(12:51):
place is that you begin tounderstand that you don't have to.
Understand diversity in orderto appreciate diversity.
So, of course, right?
I can't speak 150 languages,but I can appreciate that my
students speak multiple languages.
And sometimes in the classroom is reallyhelpful for students that share the
(13:15):
same first language to have an in classconversation, because in your second
languages, in your second language,some things just don't come across.
And so just appreciating thediversity is such a big thing.
And, you know, we talkabout our global society.
LaGuardia is like a microcosmof a global society.
(13:37):
So every day our students are learningand experiencing what it is to work with
people who may be with be like you orwho are not like you or what I think
is even more important that someonethat you think is different from you,
you'll see how they are similar to you.
So I, the diversity issuch a huge boon for us.
(14:00):
Right.
It makes our classroomsreally, really interesting.
And it's a, it's a boon for our students.
I love it.
And it's not all just about, you know,like, you know, dominated by racial
diversity, it's everything else too.
Right.
I read that something like a thirdof your students are not born,
(14:20):
were not born in the United States.
Right.
Like, that's really so interesting.
I wasn't born in theUnited States by the way.
Um, and and, and I think that thereis so much, it's, it makes the
world so interesting when you seedifferent perspectives, it allows
you to question your own perspectivesbecause you see other people's, right?
(14:42):
I think it's interestingthat a third of this team.
Wasn't born in the United States.
That's pretty, that'spretty, that's pretty astute.
So, so your, your faculty body alsoreflect on this, over the students
too, which is another part of, youknow, being to be diverse like that.
(15:03):
It's, you know, I, I thinkthere's, there's this weird,
well, I, I, I think it's weird.
I think many of my, our audienceagree with us that is weird, but I
think that there is in the, in, in, inmuch of the sort of mainstream media
today, that is, there has been a sortof, you know, push back on diversity,
(15:30):
you know, like, Uh, big companiesclosing up their DEI initiatives.
They are, um, you know, there are ofcourse, as educators, we know that in,
in a good number of States, DEI has beenattacked and, but I also sometimes find
that, you know, I think there's some...sometimes, sometimes the, the programs
(15:54):
that are doing that weren't doing thereal DEI like weren't really, weren't
really understanding what it meant, likethe way that you had talked about, right?
You walked into a room with all thesepeople having different perspectives.
You have almost no choicebut to appreciate it.
And once you do, you see all of thegood things that comes out of it, right?
It wasn't just something where you go.
(16:16):
I'm trying to satisfysome kind of quota, right?
That doesn't happen at LaGuardia.
But, but can I also say that one of thelosses I think of also not thinking about
is how do these perspectives enhance thestudent's ability to be in the world?
So, you know, they are navigatingmultiple languages in many times, multiple
(16:41):
experiences, and this is a superpower.
And I think that even though a lot ofour students don't necessarily have,
for example, that sort of traditionaleducation, which is about going abroad
and experiencing it, they're already made.
They already have thoseskills ready to go.
And I think the question becomes, youknow, how do we harness them in a way?
(17:05):
That actually gets them out in the worldand really comes from those experiences,
even if though they're coming fromcommunity college, they're not coming
from prestigious four year college.
And yet, in many ways, they're evenmore prepared, I think, for the
world out there and to conquer it.
than many of the students that comeout from these Ivy League schools.
(17:28):
So, I want to emphasize that too, thatit's also about, you know, I mean, I
think that's one of our major, major, Ithink, you know, resources, and powers
Yeah, it is, I think, I agree, yeah.
Go ahead.
I would, you know, I would alsolike to add that that's how I see
(17:49):
our Liberal Arts program as well.
That Liberal Arts is a diverse fieldin that it exposes students to many
different disciplines, academicdisciplines, and that's you know, an
academic diversity that we offer toour students that they can experience
all these different ways of knowing theworld through science, through sociology,
(18:11):
anthropology, history, literature, andhow that also really prepares them to,
to be excellent professionals in whateverfield that they, um, they aspire to.
And, and this is why I believe inthe liberal arts, that really it
helps students to really appreciatethe breadth of human knowledge.
(18:34):
You know, I always say I want studentsto be Order by the knowledge that
exists in the world and how theycan participate in even gaining
a little bit of that knowledge.
And we in the liberal arts do thatin ways that many other really
focused disciplinary pathways can't.
And I, I want, I want to, let'stalk about that for a little bit.
(18:56):
Um, I, I have, um,
you know, I, I feel like that for some oddreasons, our society has recently been.
Well, in the recent years, probably,you know, for, for, for, for, it's
been the trend now for a littlewhile, maybe even since arguably
(19:19):
the industrial age that, that, thatliberal arts is sort of, you know.
Like it's softer, you're notgoing to get this, the, the,
the hard skills to get that job.
You can't be the lawyer or thedoctor, um, or the engineer
if you are doing liberal arts.
(19:40):
Um, but I think the people actuallyforget that, um, almost all the
people that are the most probablypossibly many of the most powerful,
you know, organizations, companies.
Industry, they're actually runby people that actually really
just have those critical thinkingskills and problem solving skills.
(20:04):
Oftentimes they are not practicing thatone, you know, special disciplines.
Um, and, and for people to, to actuallysort of, you know, look down on Liberal
Arts, I think it's really weird.
Um, I, not only do I think thatit's weird for that reason, we also
have had in our history, you know,if we go back to the Renaissance.
(20:25):
Right?
Renaissance was about like, you know,you know, people like Leonardo da
Vinci, who, who, who knows everything,who's interested in it, who is
curious in the world, you know, whowants to think about flying machines
as he's about paintings, um, right.
Who likes to value all thesethings and make curiosity a
(20:46):
huge part of purpose in life.
And yet when it comes to sort of.
You know, sort of modern education, weseem to have, when I say industrial,
the industrial age, it seems to bealmost like a very industrialized
factory like thinking in our, in ourmental mindset, which is, well, how do
(21:10):
we specialize in some things to make itmaybe more efficient to get you a little
further and deeper into that field.
Now, I, I think that that has.
In a weird way worked asa narrative for a while.
Um, but, but in reality, it doesn'tactually really work when we map out
all the people that run our world.
(21:32):
And I'm not even talking about just,you know, people who are CEOs of
big companies or whatever, right?
Because you don't justmajor to be a CEO actually.
Um, um, but I'm also talking about,you know, all the people that do
communication, marketing, journalism.
So you forget that there is thiswhole swathe of people outside of
(21:56):
actually about half a dozen reallysort of prominent, like fields
that are, that, that have the name.
And I'm, by the way, not sayingthat they're not good, like,
please, if you're passionateabout being adopted, do it right.
But actually our world is also run byall these other people that do incredible
things that, that gives purpose.
Right?
(22:16):
And so somehow we sort of almostput all the narrative around, you
know, a few fields that have a goodstory, but then the rest of it, we've
sort of almost like ignored, um,as if they, they weren't of value.
I think, I think what'sinteresting is when.
(22:39):
And there have been many studies thatshow this when an employer is asked,
what do you want from your employees?
They want them to read well.
They want them to write well.
They want them to speak well.
They want their employees tohave critical thinking skills.
(23:00):
That's the liberal arts.
That's the liberal art.
And if someone can do those things, well,then they can add additional skills.
They do it better.
They go further, don't they?
Yes.
So when you think about your biologystudents, if they do become, you know,
going into the medical path or they wantto go, you know, into the research area.
(23:24):
Really, the building block doesn'tcome from just learning biology.
It comes from the Liberal Arts to makethem better thinkers, better learners,
and then they go further there.
And by the way, I also think that there'sone more thing too, that there's almost
like this, you just need some LiberalArts in order to do something else.
(23:45):
I think liberal arts itself can be apretty good end point to, um, you know,
there is nothing wrong about being likea really good general critical thinker
who can think for yourself, who canlearn really well and go into the world.
And I would even argue, don't youthink that, and I know that this
(24:06):
sounds like science fiction, but tome, you know, in the next few years,
as AI becomes better and better as.
You know, there's going to becomea point where some of our graduates
not from the Liberal Arts program,actually Liberal Arts is the one
that's really hard to replace.
(24:27):
But, some of our graduates comingfrom programs where it's heavy skill
base or is very like many layers ofskills, many, many, a lot of content,
the content heavy, you know, sort ofmajors, actually a lot of that content.
AI is going to be really good at doing,in fact, I would go as far as arguing
(24:50):
that it almost is going to be hard,if not impossible for our graduates
to be as good as the AI would be at,at, at just knowing that knowledge
and knowing that content, right?
So, so you're right.
Oh, I'm sorry.
(25:12):
I like to talk, but you're right in that.
What.
The encyclopedic knowledge, right,that we used to call smart has been
completely taken over by computers.
However, critical thinking cannotbe taken over by computers.
(25:35):
And so I love that.
I love that.
I have a little theory on this, Tonya.
I want to see what you think about it.
I really think that the way that we dothis, you know, the critical thinking,
you know, from a, you know, if you thinkabout it from a cognitive neuroscience
standpoint is all of these nodes of,you know, sort of experiences that
(25:56):
we have and we learn to process them.
When we process them, we createlinks between these, you know, so
that's where the neural networkcomes in, into our brains, right?
That's, that's, That's, that's, that'sreally how, you know, our brains work
now that those pathways are very complexand they overlap and they go from,
(26:17):
you know, really simple, instinctivethings to really difficult stuff.
Right.
And, and the way that we getbetter at learning and critical
thinking is through that processingof experience, which by the way.
Demetri, you talked about abunch of times reflection,
that's really what it is, right?
So we develop these ways to buildthese neural networks and we, each
(26:40):
of us have our own stack of neuralnetworks built through our experiences.
There is currently no way.
At least not yet that a machine and reachinto our brain and build that for us.
Right.
What it can do is to give us a lot ofthose nodes of like experiences and maybe
(27:01):
like give you like, Hey, an encounter of,Hey, this is a recording of what happened.
This is something thatsomeone wrote Demetri, right.
Back in, you know, like, uh, uh,over, uh, you know, like almost
2000, like over 2000 years ago.
Right.
But you still have to process it.
And it's that processor thatwe're having our students build.
(27:24):
I really think that that's whatliberal arts does is that it,
it makes us better processors.
But I also think that it also, that'sthe requirement for us to become
better pedagogues and teachers, right?
I mean, I see our role, notnecessarily only just sort of moving
forward with knowledge building,but also asking the right questions.
(27:48):
for the students to make the connections,and AI could never replace that.
And I think one of the things thatI want to sort of just track back,
um, Jeff, about what you were sayingbefore is that I think for so long, the
liberal arts has also been, I think,the domain of the privileged, right?
Because when you're talking about whatWhat are our student incomes, right?
(28:12):
And they're looking for the job.
They're looking for that career or thatthing that will bring in the money,
and yet they're not looking beyond.
And I think one of the things that hasbeen so important, I think, both, um,
under sort of Gail Mello, our formerpresident, and under the leadership
of Dionne, too, who has really sortof shaped the liberal arts department,
(28:36):
it really has been about access.
To those possibilities, which Ithink is really, really important.
And that's, I think, one of thethings that I think makes LaGuardia
so great that we are not a work fora workforce development institution,
but we are one where there aremultiple options and multiple paths
(28:59):
that could lead to many differentpossibilities and the liberal arts.
And I think Pedagogy or a form ofteaching that actually is rooted in
reflection allows that to happen.
And that's really where socialmobility is possible, right?
(29:22):
So the idea that, you know,you grew up in a home where you
don't have a lot of resources.
If you are continuously Thinking in thoseterms and thinking that your only path
is to quickly get a job, right, thatcan, that can, and you can skip over all
of the, the, you know, the, the otherpieces, it, it makes it possible for
(29:44):
you to just keep continuing that cyclewhere you can get out of a certain level
of, you know, it's almost like that halfof the world is not accessible to you.
Right.
Whereas the other half who realizethat actually, no, that's where all the
thinking and enjoyment comes from, right.
They're doing that because you got,you almost got to believe that, well,
(30:08):
that's not for me because how, how amI going to get a job, you know, like
learning about thinking for myself,I just need to be able to do this.
Skill that can like quickly, liketranslate to a paycheck, except
that that's not even really true.
While, while it is possible to translatethat into a paycheck, so can, so can all
(30:28):
the things that you do in liberal arts.
It's maybe slightly less obvious,but it's only slightly less obvious.
I think you can prove it quickly.
Here's a preview of what's coming upnext in part two of my conversation with
Tonya Hendrix, Demetri Karpathianakos.
And Dionne Miller fromLaGuardia Community College.
(30:48):
So, and I think it's takenstudents beyond, this is the
liberal arts, this is what I'mlearning, to I am the liberal arts.
The liberal arts matters to me.
It's integral to who I am.
Welcome to DigicationScholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Jeff Yan.
In this episode, you will hear Part Oneof my conversation with Tonya Hendrix,
Demetri Kapetanakos, and Dionne Millerfrom LaGuardia Community College.
More links and information about today'sconversation can be found on Digication's
(00:23):
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Full episodes of Digication ScholarsConversations can be found on
YouTube or your favorite podcast app.
Welcome to DigiCationScholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Jeff Yan.
My guests today are Tonya Hendrix,Demetri  Kapetanakos, and Dionne Miller
(00:46):
from LaGuardia Community College.
They are authors of a paperrecently published at the
International Journal of ePortfolio.
The title of this paper is Creatingan Integrative Student's Liberal Arts
Identity, a reflection on the processof building an ePortfolio for a
community college Liberal Arts program.
(01:08):
Welcome, everyone.
And, uh, I want to say, first ofall, I've always been a huge fan and
admirer of LaGuardia community college.
It is just, it's been a, uh, anhonor and a pleasure to have been
able to work alongside folks atLaGuardia throughout the years.
(01:31):
And, uh, I think we've had now somethinglike a 15 year long relationship.
Um, and it's, it's just oneof the highlights of my life.
It's literally, is it's now a. A bigportion of my life and, and it's one that
has been so, um, I'm, I'm continuouslyinspired and impressed by all that you do.
And, and the thing aboutit is it doesn't stop.
(01:53):
It was amazing in thebeginning of that journey.
It is still amazing 15 years later.
And today we have three reallyjust amazing educators here.
Um, so I wanted to just.
Um, maybe go around really quickly,ask you, what do you do at LaGuardia?
Really quickly.
Tell us that maybe starting with Tonya.
(02:13):
Hi everybody.
Um, I currently teach First Year Seminarclasses and Biology classes at LaGuardia.
Great.
And Dionne.
I am an associate dean for academicaffairs and I serve among other
things as the program directorfor the Liberal Arts major.
Awesome.
And Demetri.
(02:35):
So, um, I teach first year seminar, Iteach English classes, and I'm actually
really, really excited because I'mactually teaching Classical Lit in
Homer for the first time to my students,so Sounds fun, and uh And nerdy!
Jeff and I'm sure that I'msure that there you find race.
(02:58):
Well, just having interacted withyou a little bit, I'm sure you find
really good ways to engage withthem, which is a lot of what we're
going to be talking about today.
Um, I, I am so, so impressedby the paper that you wrote.
And I, I remember I w I read it and, and.
(03:18):
It actually co... coincides with alot of how I've been feeling a lot
about, and it really starts with.
Actually, there is a somewhat of a declineconfidence in higher education today in
the higher education landscape, not onlyI'm not talking specifically for, you
know, any kinds of like colleges or, youknow, regions or the, you know, or, um,
(03:44):
you know, uh, but, but more in general,there has been a decline in confidence
in higher education, um, because of asort of a drop in belief that the value
of a degree, what it means, and I thinkthat in your paper it really, you know,
you had said that it, it had literallygone from something like 74 percent to
(04:06):
41%, you know, based on a study and,and that's, that's alarming to me.
Right.
It's alarming to me, by the way, not only,you know, I don't believe that we should
just blindly think that higher educationis, and that the degree is good for you,
but we should realize that if it went from74 percent to 41%, what changed and what,
(04:29):
what could make that be the case, right?
So Dionne, maybe I want to ask you first,as an Associate Dean, you are someone
who, who would be looking at these things.
Both you're thinking about, you know, froma student standpoint, the well being and
all of that, but you're also looking atthe bigger picture of where we're going
(04:50):
as a college, you know, in your program.
So tell me a little bit about whatyou think, what you think when you,
when you discover these numbers.
It's very alarming, Jeff.
I agree.
I believe in the purpose of education,just as not only for the individual,
but also for society at large.
(05:11):
You know, I think apart from givingour students skills so that they
can, um, make progress economically.
That's important.
But we're also giving our studentsskills to make them good citizens.
And when we don't have students in ourclassroom, we don't have a chance to give
them the tools to really allow them tofully participate in their society and to
(05:36):
improve, you know, our role as a species.
overall, um, in the world.
So that really alarms me because, youknow, I think just knowledge is such a
basic fundamental right and something thatall of us should be striving to attain, no
matter what it is that we do in the world.
(05:58):
Yeah.
And Demetri, what does Homer say?
Oh, I don't know.
I mean,
I was actually reading the Iliad yesterdayand it's really, One of the things that I
feel is missing and being at LaGuardia andworking both with people like Dionne and
Tonya is thinking about how could we bereflexive about why all of this matters.
(06:24):
You know, why does theliberal arts matters?
Why do these differentideas swirling around?
Why does this possibly blind poetfrom 8th century Greece still matter?
And they all do.
And I feel that one of the thingsis that we live in a society right
now where this idea of reflection ismissing and we really need to think
(06:46):
about how could we bring that back,not only to social media, not only
into the way we read people, but also.
That the value of an educationis about helping you all do that.
And Tonya, do you see the samething in your, your classes as well?
Absolutely.
Um, I think about students and theirability to, to do critical thinking.
(07:13):
Um, when I teach the scientificmethod, I teach it as evidence
based critical thinking becauseit is, and it's a necessary skill.
Um, so when I think about our students or.
Anybody that I love and care for, whatI want you to be able to do is take the
facts and make them mean something andnot have somebody else do that for you.
(07:38):
So I'm afraid that, you know, Idon't really like to talk about
politics really, but there's thisidea that an educated populace.
It's not good for somebody.
It's obviously good for us ascitizens, but who is it not good for?
And that's something, um, that weshould consider for our students
(08:00):
and help our students to consider.
And, and by the way, um, I wantto, I want to point out something
that I think it's a myth.
I think it's people.
I think people, um, sort of putsthis identity onto folks who are in
(08:21):
the sciences in STEM to think thatthese are people who only likes
to deal with the black and whites.
They do not value reflection.
They think it's too soft.
They think it's too touchy feely.
It is a hundred percent untrue.
We have someone on the panel rightnow who teaches in biology and
then another teaches Homer, right?
And that both of them are talking aboutthe value of reflection and value of
(08:46):
what it means to be a productive citizen.
And these are the kinds of things thatto me, I want to go back to Dionne.
You, you very just succinctly hadsaid right away, we need these
people to become productive citizens.
We want them to have a sense offulfillment and passion in life, right?
To enjoy themselves.
(09:07):
And you don't get to be able to do that.
If all you care about are sort of skillsthat learnable skills that are, you
know, from, um, uh, that, that, that,that seems to satisfy the short term
satisfaction of maybe a job requirement,but that doesn't bring you very far
because that job is going to change.
(09:27):
That job is going toget evolved over time.
Those skills gonna beoutdated very quickly, right?
Many of those skillsare not durable skills.
They are ephemeral.
They are, they're hype.
Half lives are short these days,especially when we encounter AI, right?
Like, like that's going to,that's going to... AI is.
(09:52):
However, we, we look at it, youknow, we like it, we don't like it.
We, we, we, we thinkof it as an assistant.
We think of it as a collaborator, etcetera, et cetera, all the different
metaphors, but what, what is I thinkpretty easily identifiable is that it is.
Extremely studious.
So things that has been published inthe world, things that it has his hands
(10:15):
on, it reads and it consumes everything.
So those kind of first level, I liketo think of it as almost like the
first level learning, which is just,here's some, I hear some, here's
some content, read it, remember it.
And that's it, that AI is going to bereally good at doing, but what I thought
(10:36):
was really amazing with Tonya, when yousaid, well, you need to make that your
own, you have to think through that.
That's where the criticalthinking comes in, right?
So this is where you processthat experience of, Hey!
I experienced some fact.
And if you can experience it even betteris even better than reading about it, then
(10:56):
the process of doing that, like dealingwith the experience seems to really
be the building block of the criticalthinking and, and, and the purpose and
all of that, that you would talk about.
I, I, I got so much out of your paper andI wanted to then say, um, now I, I, and
I, I sometimes find that at LaGuardia.
(11:19):
Um, I'm always amazed by howincredibly diverse your demographic is.
Um, you, and, and that might,to me, it sometimes feel like
as people that work there, youmust have almost like no choice.
Even if you wanted to, but to embrace thatdiversity, and then you can really use it.
(11:45):
And I actually do think that itis a special, um, scenario where
actually there are a lot of collegesdon't have, and therefore they don't
truly understand what that means.
So maybe one of you can tell us a littlebit about like, what does it mean by like,
you know, dive in a diverse demographic.
(12:08):
Um, I, I remember, I will just use onething that I remember hearing about.
I think LaGuardia, there are somethinglike over 150 languages spoken
amongst your population, right?
That's incredible.
That, that's really swell.
Suddenly it puts you into a perspectivethat says, Oh man, I don't even know.
How to name 150 languages.
(12:31):
Um, and, and that there are that manyjust within the, you know, on campus.
And so why don't you tell us alittle bit about, you know, sort of
where LaGuardia is right now on thedemographic, just, you know, ballpark.
I'd like to say what's fantasticabout being in such a diverse
(12:51):
place is that you begin tounderstand that you don't have to.
Understand diversity in orderto appreciate diversity.
So, of course, right?
I can't speak 150 languages,but I can appreciate that my
students speak multiple languages.
And sometimes in the classroom is reallyhelpful for students that share the
(13:15):
same first language to have an in classconversation, because in your second
languages, in your second language,some things just don't come across.
And so just appreciating thediversity is such a big thing.
And, you know, we talkabout our global society.
LaGuardia is like a microcosmof a global society.
(13:37):
So every day our students are learningand experiencing what it is to work with
people who may be with be like you orwho are not like you or what I think
is even more important that someonethat you think is different from you,
you'll see how they are similar to you.
So I, the diversity issuch a huge boon for us.
(14:00):
Right.
It makes our classroomsreally, really interesting.
And it's a, it's a boon for our students.
I love it.
And it's not all just about, you know,like, you know, dominated by racial
diversity, it's everything else too.
Right.
I read that something like a thirdof your students are not born,
(14:20):
were not born in the United States.
Right.
Like, that's really so interesting.
I wasn't born in theUnited States by the way.
Um, and and, and I think that thereis so much, it's, it makes the
world so interesting when you seedifferent perspectives, it allows
you to question your own perspectivesbecause you see other people's, right?
(14:42):
I think it's interestingthat a third of this team.
Wasn't born in the United States.
That's pretty, that'spretty, that's pretty astute.
So, so your, your faculty body alsoreflect on this, over the students
too, which is another part of, youknow, being to be diverse like that.
(15:03):
It's, you know, I, I thinkthere's, there's this weird,
well, I, I, I think it's weird.
I think many of my, our audienceagree with us that is weird, but I
think that there is in the, in, in, inmuch of the sort of mainstream media
today, that is, there has been a sortof, you know, push back on diversity,
(15:30):
you know, like, Uh, big companiesclosing up their DEI initiatives.
They are, um, you know, there are ofcourse, as educators, we know that in,
in a good number of States, DEI has beenattacked and, but I also sometimes find
that, you know, I think there's some...sometimes, sometimes the, the programs
(15:54):
that are doing that weren't doing thereal DEI like weren't really, weren't
really understanding what it meant, likethe way that you had talked about, right?
You walked into a room with all thesepeople having different perspectives.
You have almost no choicebut to appreciate it.
And once you do, you see all of thegood things that comes out of it, right?
It wasn't just something where you go.
(16:16):
I'm trying to satisfysome kind of quota, right?
That doesn't happen at LaGuardia.
But, but can I also say that one of thelosses I think of also not thinking about
is how do these perspectives enhance thestudent's ability to be in the world?
So, you know, they are navigatingmultiple languages in many times, multiple
(16:41):
experiences, and this is a superpower.
And I think that even though a lot ofour students don't necessarily have,
for example, that sort of traditionaleducation, which is about going abroad
and experiencing it, they're already made.
They already have thoseskills ready to go.
And I think the question becomes, youknow, how do we harness them in a way?
(17:05):
That actually gets them out in the worldand really comes from those experiences,
even if though they're coming fromcommunity college, they're not coming
from prestigious four year college.
And yet, in many ways, they're evenmore prepared, I think, for the
world out there and to conquer it.
than many of the students that comeout from these Ivy League schools.
(17:28):
So, I want to emphasize that too, thatit's also about, you know, I mean, I
think that's one of our major, major, Ithink, you know, resources, and powers
Yeah, it is, I think, I agree, yeah.
Go ahead.
I would, you know, I would alsolike to add that that's how I see
(17:49):
our Liberal Arts program as well.
That Liberal Arts is a diverse fieldin that it exposes students to many
different disciplines, academicdisciplines, and that's you know, an
academic diversity that we offer toour students that they can experience
all these different ways of knowing theworld through science, through sociology,
(18:11):
anthropology, history, literature, andhow that also really prepares them to,
to be excellent professionals in whateverfield that they, um, they aspire to.
And, and this is why I believe inthe liberal arts, that really it
helps students to really appreciatethe breadth of human knowledge.
(18:34):
You know, I always say I want studentsto be Order by the knowledge that
exists in the world and how theycan participate in even gaining
a little bit of that knowledge.
And we in the liberal arts do thatin ways that many other really
focused disciplinary pathways can't.
And I, I want, I want to, let'stalk about that for a little bit.
(18:56):
Um, I, I have, um,
you know, I, I feel like that for some oddreasons, our society has recently been.
Well, in the recent years, probably,you know, for, for, for, for, it's
been the trend now for a littlewhile, maybe even since arguably
(19:19):
the industrial age that, that, thatliberal arts is sort of, you know.
Like it's softer, you're notgoing to get this, the, the,
the hard skills to get that job.
You can't be the lawyer or thedoctor, um, or the engineer
if you are doing liberal arts.
(19:40):
Um, but I think the people actuallyforget that, um, almost all the
people that are the most probablypossibly many of the most powerful,
you know, organizations, companies.
Industry, they're actually runby people that actually really
just have those critical thinkingskills and problem solving skills.
(20:04):
Oftentimes they are not practicing thatone, you know, special disciplines.
Um, and, and for people to, to actuallysort of, you know, look down on Liberal
Arts, I think it's really weird.
Um, I, not only do I think thatit's weird for that reason, we also
have had in our history, you know,if we go back to the Renaissance.
(20:25):
Right?
Renaissance was about like, you know,you know, people like Leonardo da
Vinci, who, who, who knows everything,who's interested in it, who is
curious in the world, you know, whowants to think about flying machines
as he's about paintings, um, right.
Who likes to value all thesethings and make curiosity a
(20:46):
huge part of purpose in life.
And yet when it comes to sort of.
You know, sort of modern education, weseem to have, when I say industrial,
the industrial age, it seems to bealmost like a very industrialized
factory like thinking in our, in ourmental mindset, which is, well, how do
(21:10):
we specialize in some things to make itmaybe more efficient to get you a little
further and deeper into that field.
Now, I, I think that that has.
In a weird way worked asa narrative for a while.
Um, but, but in reality, it doesn'tactually really work when we map out
all the people that run our world.
(21:32):
And I'm not even talking about just,you know, people who are CEOs of
big companies or whatever, right?
Because you don't justmajor to be a CEO actually.
Um, um, but I'm also talking about,you know, all the people that do
communication, marketing, journalism.
So you forget that there is thiswhole swathe of people outside of
(21:56):
actually about half a dozen reallysort of prominent, like fields
that are, that, that have the name.
And I'm, by the way, not sayingthat they're not good, like,
please, if you're passionateabout being adopted, do it right.
But actually our world is also run byall these other people that do incredible
things that, that gives purpose.
Right?
(22:16):
And so somehow we sort of almostput all the narrative around, you
know, a few fields that have a goodstory, but then the rest of it, we've
sort of almost like ignored, um,as if they, they weren't of value.
I think, I think what'sinteresting is when.
(22:39):
And there have been many studies thatshow this when an employer is asked,
what do you want from your employees?
They want them to read well.
They want them to write well.
They want them to speak well.
They want their employees tohave critical thinking skills.
(23:00):
That's the liberal arts.
That's the liberal art.
And if someone can do those things, well,then they can add additional skills.
They do it better.
They go further, don't they?
Yes.
So when you think about your biologystudents, if they do become, you know,
going into the medical path or they wantto go, you know, into the research area.
(23:24):
Really, the building block doesn'tcome from just learning biology.
It comes from the Liberal Arts to makethem better thinkers, better learners,
and then they go further there.
And by the way, I also think that there'sone more thing too, that there's almost
like this, you just need some LiberalArts in order to do something else.
(23:45):
I think liberal arts itself can be apretty good end point to, um, you know,
there is nothing wrong about being likea really good general critical thinker
who can think for yourself, who canlearn really well and go into the world.
And I would even argue, don't youthink that, and I know that this
(24:06):
sounds like science fiction, but tome, you know, in the next few years,
as AI becomes better and better as.
You know, there's going to becomea point where some of our graduates
not from the Liberal Arts program,actually Liberal Arts is the one
that's really hard to replace.
(24:27):
But, some of our graduates comingfrom programs where it's heavy skill
base or is very like many layers ofskills, many, many, a lot of content,
the content heavy, you know, sort ofmajors, actually a lot of that content.
AI is going to be really good at doing,in fact, I would go as far as arguing
(24:50):
that it almost is going to be hard,if not impossible for our graduates
to be as good as the AI would be at,at, at just knowing that knowledge
and knowing that content, right?
So, so you're right.
Oh, I'm sorry.
(25:12):
I like to talk, but you're right in that.
What.
The encyclopedic knowledge, right,that we used to call smart has been
completely taken over by computers.
However, critical thinking cannotbe taken over by computers.
(25:35):
And so I love that.
I love that.
I have a little theory on this, Tonya.
I want to see what you think about it.
I really think that the way that we dothis, you know, the critical thinking,
you know, from a, you know, if you thinkabout it from a cognitive neuroscience
standpoint is all of these nodes of,you know, sort of experiences that
(25:56):
we have and we learn to process them.
When we process them, we createlinks between these, you know, so
that's where the neural networkcomes in, into our brains, right?
That's, that's, That's, that's, that'sreally how, you know, our brains work
now that those pathways are very complexand they overlap and they go from,
(26:17):
you know, really simple, instinctivethings to really difficult stuff.
Right.
And, and the way that we getbetter at learning and critical
thinking is through that processingof experience, which by the way.
Demetri, you talked about abunch of times reflection,
that's really what it is, right?
So we develop these ways to buildthese neural networks and we, each
(26:40):
of us have our own stack of neuralnetworks built through our experiences.
There is currently no way.
At least not yet that a machine and reachinto our brain and build that for us.
Right.
What it can do is to give us a lot ofthose nodes of like experiences and maybe
(27:01):
like give you like, Hey, an encounter of,Hey, this is a recording of what happened.
This is something thatsomeone wrote Demetri, right.
Back in, you know, like, uh, uh,over, uh, you know, like almost
2000, like over 2000 years ago.
Right.
But you still have to process it.
And it's that processor thatwe're having our students build.
(27:24):
I really think that that's whatliberal arts does is that it,
it makes us better processors.
But I also think that it also, that'sthe requirement for us to become
better pedagogues and teachers, right?
I mean, I see our role, notnecessarily only just sort of moving
forward with knowledge building,but also asking the right questions.
(27:48):
for the students to make the connections,and AI could never replace that.
And I think one of the things thatI want to sort of just track back,
um, Jeff, about what you were sayingbefore is that I think for so long, the
liberal arts has also been, I think,the domain of the privileged, right?
Because when you're talking about whatWhat are our student incomes, right?
(28:12):
And they're looking for the job.
They're looking for that career or thatthing that will bring in the money,
and yet they're not looking beyond.
And I think one of the things that hasbeen so important, I think, both, um,
under sort of Gail Mello, our formerpresident, and under the leadership
of Dionne, too, who has really sortof shaped the liberal arts department,
(28:36):
it really has been about access.
To those possibilities, which Ithink is really, really important.
And that's, I think, one of thethings that I think makes LaGuardia
so great that we are not a work fora workforce development institution,
but we are one where there aremultiple options and multiple paths
(28:59):
that could lead to many differentpossibilities and the liberal arts.
And I think Pedagogy or a form ofteaching that actually is rooted in
reflection allows that to happen.
And that's really where socialmobility is possible, right?
(29:22):
So the idea that, you know,you grew up in a home where you
don't have a lot of resources.
If you are continuously Thinking in thoseterms and thinking that your only path
is to quickly get a job, right, thatcan, that can, and you can skip over all
of the, the, you know, the, the otherpieces, it, it makes it possible for
(29:44):
you to just keep continuing that cyclewhere you can get out of a certain level
of, you know, it's almost like that halfof the world is not accessible to you.
Right.
Whereas the other half who realizethat actually, no, that's where all the
thinking and enjoyment comes from, right.
They're doing that because you got,you almost got to believe that, well,
(30:08):
that's not for me because how, how amI going to get a job, you know, like
learning about thinking for myself,I just need to be able to do this.
Skill that can like quickly, liketranslate to a paycheck, except
that that's not even really true.
While, while it is possible to translatethat into a paycheck, so can, so can all
(30:28):
the things that you do in liberal arts.
It's maybe slightly less obvious,but it's only slightly less obvious.
I think you can prove it quickly.
Here's a preview of what's coming upnext in part two of my conversation with
Tonya Hendrix, Demetri Karpathianakos.
And Dionne Miller fromLaGuardia Community College.
(30:48):
So, and I think it's takenstudents beyond, this is the
liberal arts, this is what I'mlearning, to I am the liberal arts.
The liberal arts matters to me.
It's integral to who I am.
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