Maggie Franke

COMM 494

April 21, 2020

Dr. Chase

Essay 2: How Does Liberal Arts Contribute to Vocational Fulfillment?

Students choose different colleges for a variety of reasons. Many choose based on the

education they believe they will receive at certain esteemed institutions, but the deciding factors

can range from Greek life availability to athletic programs to religious affiliation and many

more. What makes a liberal arts college stand apart from these deciding factors, especially at a

Christian institution, is the expectation of a wide range of study.

At Wheaton College, students are required to have a certain number of language credits,

math credits, science credits, art credits and essentially take at least one class in each field

offered at the institution. While some would see this unnecessary when they go off to work in a

very specialized field, this has a major impact on the ability of Wheaton College students to

empathize with other ways of thinking.

Recent studies have shown that a liberal arts education has a positive impact on the

neuroplasticity of a person’s brain. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, neuroplasticity is the

ability of neurons to alter their connections or change their behavior in response to different

information, stimulation of the senses, development, damage or dysfunction. For many years, the

psychology field thought this was impossible; human brains were thought to be rooted in their

nature and unable to change.

 This ability is a new concept to many scholars, within the past few decades even, and

Smith and Leach’s study in 2010 asserted that a liberal arts education actually has a direct,

positive impact on a person’s neuroplasticity. This directly impacts a person’s ability to be a

cognitively complex communicator; this is where a liberal arts education matters to a

communication scholar.

A cognitively complex communicator has better abilities to construct a variety of

framethe ability to construct a variety of frameworks for viewing an issue. convergence.
the process of adapting one's speech style to that of others. divergence.

Hale, C. L. (1980). Cognitive complexity‐simplicity as a determinant of communication

effectiveness. Communication Monographs, 47(4), 304–311.

https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758009376039

Smith, R. A., & Leach, J. R. (2010). Liberal Arts Education and Brain Plasticity. Philosophy in

the Contemporary World, 17(2), 119-130.