New PDF release: A Matter of Style: Reflections on Liberal Education

The culture of convocations at Lawrence derives from an older culture of chapel providers, which first begun in 1856 and, till the mid-1870s, happened two times day-by-day. After that time and till 1927, Lawrence required scholars to wait chapel companies just once an afternoon. The time period convocation first seemed within the 1926–27 catalogue, the place it used to be known as “a typical university assembly.” hence, convocations changed chapel companies and have been held for 25 mins thrice every one week in Memorial Chapel, even though attendance was once nonetheless required. throughout the subsequent forty years, the frequency and length of convocations diversified; via the mid-1960s, they have been held as soon as a month, yet attendance persevered to be required. the college authorized a plan in 1968 to lessen the convocations to 2 a yr— Matriculation and Honors Day—and to drop the attendance requirement. In 1978, on the initiative of Richard Warch, then Lawrence’s leader educational officer, the current convocation series—which often comprises 5 - 6 a year—was introduced. Attendance is voluntary. Convocations have been defined in a listing access in the course of Nathan Pusey’s presidency as “a form of basic all-college direction without
formal standards or credit.” in lots of methods, that description nonetheless matches. regularly, the president addresses the neighborhood on the Matriculation Convocation, and President Warch did so on twenty-five events. these speeches, which jointly determine, critique, and have fun positive aspects of liberal schooling and the liberal arts college—especially Lawrence—at the top of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty first, are collected during this quantity, in addition to an introductory essay and a model of either his welcome to new scholars and his final graduation handle to the contributors of the graduating class.