I recently came across a 2001 Iowa State Daily article about a former student of mine Rachel Hein who was an environmentalist and had taken part in a 220 person protest in front of Menards. The link is at the end of this post.

It applies even more given the new assault on our public lands and our planet as a whole.

"Steven Herrnstadt, associate professor of art and design who taught Hein in some classes, said he is pleased to have a student who is not learning to "fit the proper cubicle.""Everything we learn and teach here is not without the context of greater experience," Herrnstadt said. "Everything has an interconnection to … a ripple effect on everything else."Herrnstadt said universities need to have a social obligation to explain these concepts to students."The workings of our society and the world are not understood well enough by us to cast aside what the environmentalists and humanists have to say as merely 'tree hugging' nonsense," he said.

STEM and Business/entrepreneurship need to be taught in context of the humanities, ethics and the arts. Otherwise advancement and innovation becomes about short term profit an solutions only. It will lack the vision of historical events which should serve to illustrate benefits/detriments. Parsing our knowledge into the smaller departments/subjects that current education finds comfortable but not bringing them into the greater gestalt invariable means that pieces are left behind. The mere sum of the parts is rarely perhaps never equal to the whole. All subjects need to be emphasized in our educational systems, particularly at the levels of higher education. BUT more than that, universities must emphasize Collaboration. And it must be collaboration without ego's.

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_8149718c-7e80-52ce-b86d-371612eddf6c.html

smh 2017