We always argue (hope?) that all this wonderful stuff we’re passing along at a liberal arts college will have some value down the road, often in strange and unexpected ways, but it’s awfully nice when concrete examples come our way, as two have done this week.
First, Kirsten Jaglo (UMM ’94) was back on campus earlier in the week as the Latterell Visiting Alumna. She’s gone through a PhD in biology and a post doc at the University of California at San Franciso to her current position in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Change as a American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow.
Her responsibilities include developing, negotiating and implementing U.S. international climate change policy and providing scientific expertise for the United States Agency for International Development.
She became fluent in Danish through multiple study abroad experiences in high school and while at UMM, and apparently found this quite useful in helping get a belligerent Dane to sit down and play nice during a negotation. I can just imagine the look of surprise on his (and everyone else’s) face when she shifted into Danish…
And just yesterday Cory, one of the fine folks at Monkey River Town, pointed out that some of the computing esoterica he learned from me back in the day has proved useful in the careful crafting of their mighty Philos-O-tron. In a recent response to the truly deep question “r u real?” the Philos-O-tron incorporated ideas from the classic Turing Test, unequivocally demonstrating the value of this sort of broad based education in the creation of on-line oracles.
See, you never know when this stuff might prove useful – Liberal arts rules!
