college of arts and letters
eri yasuhara, dean

Spring 2004

The Changing Face of Liberal Studies

With 2,500 students, the liberal studies program makes up the largest degree major of any program at Cal State San Bernardino. The program is so large, in fact, that it’s the only one with its own commencement ceremony. Given that the vast majority of these majors pursue the demanding profession of teaching and, particularly now, given that new, more stringent state standards for teachers have been adopted, it’s astonishing that the program has grown so large.

Liberal studies and the elementary teacher profession, says Leo Connolly, who coordinates the program, have a diminished reputation. Some people still think, he says, “If you can’t do anything else you can always become an elementary school teacher, because it has the lowest requirements of any profession, that it is the easiest degree to get. It’s really just the opposite.” The work demands much more of today’s teachers. “The new program just raises the bar a little higher.”

Low test marks for California’s kindergarten-through-12th-grade students have triggered anxious citizen calls for higher standards for California’s teachers, new standards that college students coming into liberal studies programs will now be expected to meet. The main change, Connolly says, has come in the number of elective units offered – from 23 under the previous set of standards to just eight in the new.

“There were so many new requirements that we had to meet” that the choices in electives needed trimming, he says. For example, the new standards include a health science class, a course not contained in the old standards. Also, geometry is now covered in mathematics. Human development, non-existent in the old standards, has six units in the new program, and California history is now required study.

The revamped program gives students more structure. “We encourage students to take things in the right order. It makes sense that way.” From the second floor of the Pfau Library, Connolly’s office looks south over the campus’ front lawns, which have seen many changes since the campus opened almost 40 years ago. Thirty or 40 years ago, recalls Connolly, the liberal studies landscape also looked very different. Students would think nothing of taking that broad degree in liberal studies without feeling the need to specialize in engineering or English. Now students think in specifics, says Connolly: “I’m going to become an elementary school teacher.’”

There are more liberal studies students at Cal State than at any other inland region university, and CSUSB’s liberal studies program is among the largest in the state, adds Connolly. “Our new standards are among the best in the country.” They are the same standards implemented by the University of California system and all private colleges. As the elementary school student population continues to grow, high-quality teachers will need to be the best as well.

At the Barnes

The architect asked him, “What do you want?” Resolute, Ron Barnes sketched out a design and, in 1972, after the architect made all the necessary, technical adjustments, Cal State San Bernardino had the University Theatre. Its ceilings were not the 12-foot-high ceilings typically blessed by CSU system policies. Instead, they stretched up and up to 30 feet, and on touring the facility later, CSU officials told Barnes he had “gotten away” with something, something they loved … cautiously.

It was this 144-seat space, intentionally intimate, this stage around which these students, friends, family and colleagues gathered on Jan. 11 to celebrate the life he brought to theatre at Cal State. The first play in the new home was Chekov’s “The Seagull,” which starred students Paul DeMeo and Danny Bilson, and Barnes’ wife, Mary. One of the original faculty members when the campus opened in 1965, Ron Barnes was founding chair for the theatre department. Over his 33-year career at the college, he “had no children, just a gazillion students,” he says. And now he had the Ronald E. Barnes Theatre, a child born of his vision, and whose voice he hears in the echoes of past productions and the anticipation of ones to come.

Actors and actresses who take their bows from here are heirs of that vision, too. Some will receive funds from the $100,000 endowed scholarship being established in Barnes’ name. “In the ‘real world,’ people are not real,” he says. “In theatre, you know what the pain is and you don’t avoid it. The theatre is the only real world, because we know we’re pretending.”

Quick Takes

Finishing third in its first-ever state competition, the CSUSB Ethics Bowl team weaved its way through the complex issues of medical confidentiality, marketing practices, racial profiling, euthanasia, California’s three-strikes law and reparations for slaves. During the December competition the team captured two of three preliminary rounds, including one against eventual winner Chico State. Philosophy Professor Chris Naticchia led team members Zahra Mohammed, a political science major; Kimberley Clapp, a psychology major; and Marco Ruiz and Nathan Mellis, both students in philosophy.