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CUE 2006

Herbst Program of Humanities: CU Students Study Humanities in Rome

The College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU-Boulder is unique in sponsoring its own, in-house humanities program to promote the non-technical education of its students. Thanks to generous gifts from Clancy and Linda Vitti Herbst and others, and support from the college, the Herbst Program of Humanities is dedicated to the goal of helping CU engineering students acquire a broad, humanistic education as well as a technical one.

Along with its small seminars and interdisciplinary curriculum based on literature, philosophy, and the arts, the Herbst Program promotes the humanities through trips to the opera, poetry contests, and a film series. Such courses and events help to encourage the flexibility of mind which engineers, like other skilled professionals, need in a rapidly changing technological and social environment.

In 2005, the program's chief new initiative was a course taught in Rome, Italy. Since it is difficult to gain perspective on ourselves and to see the features that distinguish contemporary American society, the Herbst Program introduced this new Maymester course taught by program Director Wayne Ambler.

The immediate goal of the course is to help students see and understand the massive differences in the culture of Rome from one ageto the next, but the exercise also enables students to become more adept at detecting and thinking about their own American cultural identity. When done well, study abroad can assist self-understanding as well as understanding of others.

Thanks in large part to an excellent group of 25 students, the first offering of this course was a great success, and interviews are now under way with the many applicants for the 2006 edition.