The end of the school year always brings a mix of emotions. Amidst the flurry of preparations for final exams, everyone is keenly focused on the light at the end of the tunnel, when it is all over and we can breathe deeply once again. Nearly every student looks forward to going home to see family and to enjoy the warmer weather. It’s also a time of farewells, though, as we say goodbye to our friends for the summer, as well as the seniors who we probably won’t see for a long time. This May, however, I had the occasion to say adieu to one more person; a good friend and fellow member of The Poly. He was not graduating, nor was he failing out. He was transferring, because he wanted something that he couldn’t find at RPI: the ability to properly explore his interests outside of his technical concentration.
His decision weighed heavily on my mind as I attended this year’s commencement exercises. I considered his departure as I listened to Thomas Friedman talk about innovation, Steve Jobs, and calligraphy, and how the three were related. He delivered his eloquent address, and I thought back on my experiences at Rensselaer. As proud as I was to be wearing RPI’s colors that day, I had to admit that the Institute is failing us in many ways.
For example, we are in the midst of a grandiose construction project: EMPAC, a bleeding-edge performing arts center that will catapult the school to the forefront of a budding field. The beautiful space will bring new opportunities to artists from around the world. This is exciting news to me, as I fondly remember my days with the student orchestra. The tight rehearsal space in West Hall challenges the group to find new ways to make everybody fit and to keep the equipment (and members) from warping in the heat. Considering what we were able to accomplish in those conditions, I can only imagine the great strides we could make if we had proper facilities. Alas, EMPAC promises to be more experimental than it will be art; the orchestra will not be able to schedule regular practice time in the new building, nor will any other student performance group be able to use it to fully realize their potential.
Every time I go home, I marvel at how my two younger sisters have grown. One of them has turned into a true glossophile; she is well on her way to mastering two different foreign languages. She has taken school trips to Puerto Rico and Costa Rica, and I’m already hearing plans of an excursion to France next year. Sadly, despite being brilliant in math and science, she probably won’t seriously consider coming to RPI—and not just because her brother goes here. Even though there are plans to encourage, or even require, studying abroad in the future, Rensselaer is slowly decreasing its foreign language offerings. We don’t have a single tenure-track faculty member in the field, and we have cut our offerings in German—one of the most prevalent languages in science and engineering. We offer only a single foreign-language minor, French. Furthermore, we don’t even have an English department.
In her annual meeting with the Poly Editorial Board in the spring, President Shirley Ann Jackson said that students wishing to study in these fields should cross-register at other area schools; she suggested, in particular, Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. Sadly, this isn’t an option for most students who don’t have a car on campus, and for those that do, it requires a lot of extra time and money in driving and fuel costs, not to mention other headaches of scheduling and logistics.
Rensselaer’s lack goes beyond just the liberal arts and social sciences, however. RPI used to offer small courses that taught “life sports;” in fact, they were built into the requirements of the core curriculum. Now, such offerings are things of the past. On their own, they aren’t terribly important to any individual’s degree in engineering or architecture, and none of the other aforementioned holes in the Institute’s curricula are that crucial, either. As Friedman said, however, “The imagination that gives birth to great ideas, products, designs, and intellectual breakthroughs often happens when people [who] have mastered two quite different fields use the framework of one to think about the other.” If students can’t get that dual-mastery here, where can they turn?
