Wayne Fields, Ph.D., the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English and director of the American Culture Studies Program, both in Arts & Sciences, will deliver a lecture at 11 a.m. today in Graham Chapel.
The talk, “Learning for Life,” has been arranged for high school students and their parents visiting from St. Louis and around the country for one of the annual campus visit weekend programs. The lecture is open to the University community.
“It is not surprising, given the cost of higher education and the uncertain world in which we live, that in promoting Washington University to prospective students we tend to emphasize how one’s time in college, this college in particular, will ‘pay off,’ quite literally, in a better career and higher social position,” Fields said.
“Inadvertently we place the emphasis on how attending this University will influence the way in which others will see you, judge you better prepared to be a student in their graduate or professional program, ready for a particular line of employment, better trained to serve the needs and expectations they have of you.
“But today I want to consider instead how a liberal education might influence who you become as a person, the way you live — not only with others, but with yourself.”
This semester, Fields is leading a seminar for first-year students called “Presidential Rhetoric,” which focuses on the presidency and the speeches through which presidents attempt to express the nature of American union and to express the challenges and opportunities of the times in which they serve.
The subject allows a multidisciplinary approach to the office, and also a special opportunity to focus on the nature of language and argument in a democratic society.
The weekend program is hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions; Arts & Sciences; the schools of Architecture, Art, Business, and Engineering & Applied Science; and a large number of student groups.
Current WUSTL students will serve as hosts for the visitors. While they are on campus, visiting students will attend classes, attend information sessions about the University and its programs, have interviews, and take tours of the campus and of the surrounding area.
For more information, call 935-6000.