DeanThe Long Road
Catalyst of Collaboration
On September 26, 2019, I had the opportunity to address the Michigan State University President's Council, which includes the Deans Council and the Executive Leadership of the University, about the values-based strategic planning process we…
Christopher LongOctober 7, 2019
Presentation: AcademicThe Liberal ArtsVita
AGLS Keynote – Practicing the Arts of Liberty
At the heart of my keynote address to the 2018 Association of General and Liberal Studies in Pittsburgh, PA is this idea: The intellectual and ethical habits we need to transform higher education are the…
EditorialJournal of General EducationVita
The Liberal Arts Endeavor: Thick Collegiality and General Education
In this introduction to issues 1-2 of volume 66 of the Journal of General Education, Sophia Pavlos and I articulate of the meaning and importance of thick collegiality for the Journal of General Education and…
Christopher LongJuly 26, 2018
DeanThe Liberal Arts
The Liberal Arts at the Heart of the MSU Land Grant Mission
When Ryan Kilcoyne and I met late last year to plan the 2017 MSU College of Arts & Letters Dean's Report, we wanted to show what we have long talked about: situating the liberal arts…
DeanThe Liberal ArtsThe Long Road
To Teach and Delight
The last two weeks of March this year brought sadness twice over to the College of Arts & Letters. On March 18, 2017, we lost Anna Norris, a beloved professor of French Literature who taught…
EducationPoliticsThe Liberal ArtsThe Long Road
"…No Arts; No Letters; No Society…"
In early November last year, I returned to the Leviathan. In it, Thomas Hobbes grapples with the question of sovereignty and considers the human condition in a state of nature in which there is: …no…
The Administrative LifeThe Liberal Arts
Open Letter on the Executive Order on Immigration
Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff in the College of Arts & Letters: Many of you have written to express your concern about the executive order signed by the President of the United States on January…
Christopher LongJanuary 30, 2017
Presentation: InteractivePresentationsThe Liberal ArtsThe Long RoadVita
Tweeting the Liberal Arts @Muhlenberg #MCLA16
In his inaugural address as president of the college he founded, Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg spoke of the values that animate the institution: "We do not regard an education as complete that aims only at improving the intellect,"…
Christopher LongFebruary 1, 2016
EducationThe Liberal ArtsThe Long Road
A Liberal Arts Response to #Ferguson
The liberal arts have always given us powerful ways to study and understand the world we inhabit. The events in Ferguson call for a liberal arts approach because they are multidimensional. They require us to…
The Liberal ArtsThe Long Road
The Liberal Arts and Sciences and the 21st Century Land Grant Mission
At the beginning of the Physics, Aristotle captures something of the essence of the liberal arts and sciences as an endeavor. This path from the surface of things to a deeper understanding of their nature…
The Administrative LifeThe Liberal ArtsThe Long Road
Butterflies Pinned
In the winter of 1988, during my freshman year at Wittenberg University, I took Professor Warren Copeland's Introduction to Ethics: Racism course. This course and its sister, Advanced Ethics: Racism, which I took the following…
The Liberal ArtsThe Long RoadThe Undergraduate Experience
Ike Advocates for #PSUGenEd at Penn State Centennial Commencement
Fifty-nine years ago today, on June 9, 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the centennial graduating class of Penn State, where his brother, Milton, was president of the university. Two things were on the President's mind…
Christopher LongJune 9, 2014
The Administrative LifeThe Liberal ArtsThe Long RoadThe Undergraduate Experience
General Education Reform at Penn State
The Information Technology unit at Penn State holds IT Matters breakfasts a few times a year. This semester I joined colleagues on stage to talk about my work and how it intersects with IT at…
#PSUGenEd and the Research Endeavor
We at Penn State are engaged in an intense, ongoing and, in my view, very healthy dialogue about General Education reform. In order to integrate the research endeavor into the undergraduate experience, we ought to…
Deliberating GenEd Reform at Penn State
One of the values we hope to integrate into the new General Education curriculum at Penn State is the recognition of the importance of public deliberation. Deliberating in public is difficult; it requires certain intellectual…
The Administrative LifeThe Long Road
General Education Reform and the Art of Listening
By the time we took the stage as the final panel of the day, we had heard the voices of expert educators, faculty, administrators, employers and alums speak about the value and importance of general…
Christopher LongNovember 3, 2013
Music, Philosophy and the Liberal Arts
On the day he was to die, we find Socrates writing poetry. This is very strange because Socrates generally chose not to write, opting instead to engage in dialogue with those he encountered in and…
EducationThe Liberal ArtsThe Long RoadThe Undergraduate Experience
Beginning Again with the Liberal Arts
The rhythm of the academic year returns us again to the beginning. State College is charged with energy as parents drop off their children, some for the first time, and students turn and return to…
Speaking about the Liberal Arts in China
NANJING, China - One of the challenges we face in higher education in the United States is how to ensure the academic success of the many new international students from China our universities are welcoming…
Presentation: AcademicPresentation: OtherPresentationsVita
Putting the Liberal Arts into Practice @NewmanU
The Liberal Arts are not so much a set of disciplines to be studied as they are a set of habits to be practiced. This is the central point and main theme around which my…
The Humanities, Stitched
If, as Michael Bérubé suggested today in his Chronicle of Higher Education article "The Humanities, Unraveled," the situation in the humanities is "a seamless garment of crisis: If you pull on any one thread, the…
Keynote Address: Liberal Arts and Politics
From its earliest articulation in Ancient Greek thinking, the first principle and ultimate end of an education in the liberal arts has always been to live an excellent human life. Because, however, human life can…
EducationTechnologyThe Long RoadThe Undergraduate Experience
Liberal Arts Voices Hanging Out on Google
Student Panel at LASTS11 Originally uploaded by LAUSatPSU On Wednesday, September 28th at 4pm eastern, we in the Liberal Arts Undergraduate Studies office will take another step out into the great technological unknown by recording…
Presentation: OtherPresentationsVita
Liberal Arts in a Time of Crisis
Pharmakon Originally uploaded by cplong11 STATE COLLEGE, PA - These remarks were delivered at the 2011 Symposium of the Center for American Literary Studies: Crisis? Whose Crisis? What Crisis? Imagine that you are a graduate…
Blogging and the Business Classroom
July 2010 029 Originally uploaded by Penn State Smeal MBA Today I venture outside of my comfort zone in talking about teaching and learning with technology in the Liberal Arts to address a group of…
Christopher LongDecember 1, 2010
Designs on e-Learning
This September I will be presenting at the Designs on e-Learning Conference held here at Penn State. My presentation is entitled Blogging and Podcasting the Liberal Arts (the link is to the blog post on which…