Value

Liberal Arts programs like the Primary Texts Certificate can help students get ahead. Employers associate liberal arts education with skills like communication, leadership, analysis, team-work and initiative.

Professional Development

Here are some of the many stories about the impact of this type of learning for business, science, and other professions:

Washington Post: Liberal Arts or Business Education? Both, Deans Say.

Atlantic: Why America's Business Majors are in Desperate Need of a Liberal-Arts Education

AACU: Blending Liberal Art & Business Education

Forbes: That 'Useless Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech's Hottest Ticket

Science Magazine: Entrepreneurship: The Liberal Arts of Business Education

Time Magazine: Critics of the Liberal Arts Are Wrong.

Time Magazine: 10 CEOs Who Prove Your Liberal Arts Degree Isn't Worthless

Scientific American: Why STEM Students Need Humanities Courses

Here's John Warner, Assistant Professor of Political Science, briefly explaining the value of the program:

Other Institutions Take Up the Primary Texts Approach

Baker University, Baldwin City, KS

In cooperation with Kansas State's Primary Texts Certificate program, Baker University has obtained a $1.2 million gift to support a professorship and endowment for its own Primary Texts Certificate program. The program is administered by English Professor Joanne Nystrom Janssen, an expert in British literature, 19th century literature and culture, periodical culture, postcolonial and world literature. Kansas State's Primary Texts Certificate director Laurie Johnson worked with Janssen and other faculty and administrators at Baker University to create the program. The Swogger Foundation, which made this amazing gift, is affiliated with the Redbud Foundation (which funds K-State's program)--both were created by Dr. Glenn Swogger, retired CEO of Kaw Valley State Banks. Click the link for a news story about this amazing gift to Baker University.

Collaboration with Manhattan Christian College

As part of its support, the Redbud Foundation has contributed funds to support outreach to other institutions to develop core texts courses and programs. The pilot project for this new initiative involved Kansas State University's neighboring college, Manhattan Christian College. MCC already has a cooperative relationship with K-State, and with assistance from the Primary Texts program and a matching contribution from the Redbud Foundation, two of its faculty obtained a grant from the Association of Core Texts and Courses to attend the ACTC "Tradition and Innovation" Summer Seminar held at Columbia and Yale Universities in June 2014. MCC faculty took the pedagogical approaches gained from the seminar back, and in consultation with the director of the Primary Texts Certificate, developed two new courses (one on biblical and other ancient texts, the other on the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer) which can be taken by students of both institutions and count for Primary Texts credit at K-State. The Primary Texts Certificate program seeks to serve as a conduit for students from both institutions to find core text courses, to strengthen the core texts approach to teaching at MCC, and to provide a model for future cooperation with other institutions.