Selected Essays

"Why Do I Have to Take This Class?"

This fall Roanoke College is inaugurating a new general education curriculum aptly named Intellectual Inquiry. In order to address the gap in perception between faculty and students on the importance of a core curriculum ("Why Do I Have to Take This Class?"), the D. L. Jordan Endowment for the Humanities solicited from Roanoke College faculty personal essays dealing with the significance of a core curriculum to their experience as students, citizens, and professors. The essays selected serve as a showcase for the Roanoke College faculty as a community of diverse and independent critical thinkers who connect their experiences to that of their students. Our hope is that these essays will inspire students to pursue their own education with greater vigor and self-reflection.

Selected Essays:

An Answer to the Question: Why do I have to take this class? or, The Digress of Sentiment
Brent Adkins, Associate Professor of Philosophy

Coffee Klatsch or, How I Learned to Drink Deeply
Sandee McGlaun, Associate Professor of English

Taking It to 11
Roland Minton, Professor of Mathematics