Realizing the Educational Potential of Business – Humanities Collaboration

Seminar with William M. Sullivan

This talk will take up three related issues. The first section asks what higher education should provide for students and why it often fails to do so, drawing on recent work in U.S. higher education, including the 2011 Carnegie Foundation study of liberal education for business undergraduates. The second part of the talk explore the potential of the notion of the “social impact” or “social ecology” of business as a framework for developing the “value added” potentials of a more integrated and intensive undergraduate business experience. The third section will address the pressing question of how to achieve this kind of outcome, focusing on the problem of motivating and supporting students along an arc of development that leads from “thinking like a student” to enacting professional judgment. 

Tuesday, November 6, 10:30-12:30 

at Porcelænshaven 18B, Room S.0.23. 

William Sullivan is Senior Scholar at the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College. He was formerly Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where he co-authored Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education. His books also include Educating Lawyers, Work and Integrity, A New Agenda for Higher Education, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, and The Good Society. Prior to working at the Carnegie Foundation, Sullivan was professor of philosophy at LaSalle University. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Fordham University.