Education faculty and students featured in New York Times

Bruni reached out to the students because of essays they had each written for Mackler’s “Liberal Education” spring 2020 seminar class. Pastras’s essay, “Questioning while Quarantining,” made a case that Ursinus’s question-oriented curriculum, beginning with its required CIE class, prepared her to live with the uncertainty of the pandemic. Pastras wrote, “Liberal education’s focus on preparing students to live their own big questions, rather than forcing external answers, has prepared students to grapple with the existential threats to learning and living in the time of COVID-19 and the uncertainty it inherently presents.” Schmitz’s essay, “Dear Doubtful Liberal Arts Student” also argued for the value of liberal education and was quoted directly in the New York Times column.