✔ A true education requires study in all fields. ✔ Good thinking is just good thinking, especially when it happens without labels. ✔ Intellect requires analytical, creative, and practical intelligence; education should build all three. ✔ We should work to use our full mind, both analytical and creative functions. ✔ Creativity and innovation belong to both arts and sciences; the sciences (also) seek to create, and the arts (also) seek to innovate. ✔ The sciences give us answers; the liberal arts give us the questions. ✔ STEM students with liberal arts background have more knowledge from which to innovate. ✔ Students attend college to gain an appreciation of big ideas. ✔ Innovators such as Leonardo da Vinci, are usually well versed in both the arts and sciences. ✔ Liberal arts can produce a more scientifically-literate public, helping students access the sciences and helping scientists communicate their field of study. ✔ A nation that would be a world leader must support an educational system that provides excellent training for students across disciplines. ✔ The nurture and cross-training provided by liberal arts colleges produces successful scientists. ✔ Science and technology are changing the arts, the way work is created, shared, and understood. ✔ Great ideas in one field feed great ideas in other fields. ✔ The arts help guide students into science through non-traditional methods. ✔ Some see the art in science, or the science in art. Marrying the two opens up new possibilities. ✔ Learners and educators both benefit from a cross-curricular approach. ✔ True education develops scientists with background in the arts and artists who can apply science and technology. ✔ People learn in different ways. The more we blend subject areas, the more learning tools become available. ✔ Men and women sometimes approach learning differently. The liberal arts may help bridge any gender gap. ✔ Musicians need the sciences to support their personal health and enhance their performances. ✔ The liberal arts help prepare students to be tomorrow's entertainment industry, with study of art, literature, and film. ✔ The arts provide the health sciences with new approaches to patient care, rehabilitation, and therapy. ✔ The humanities and social sciences are critical to producing citizens for participatory democracy. ✔ The contemplation of ethics, morals, aesthetics, and great ideas provides spiritual enrichment. ✔ Liberal arts provide knowledge and skills required for civic life. ✔ The arts and humanities help scientists and engineers understand the human significance of their work. ✔ Those trained in the arts and humanities benefit from understanding of the scientific method, data analysis, and information literacy. ✔ Liberal education is education that liberates. It involves universal questions that transcend everyday experience. ✔ A liberal arts education requires us to think broadly and be open to multiple paths and competing answers. ✔ Education should prepare all students to be inquisitive, open-minded, and discerning in the pursuit of truth. ✔ Scientists must be able to explain the significance of their work, establishing its importance on social, cultural, and emotional levels. Cultural differences lead to misunderstanding and fear. ✔ Financial and political support for the sciences depends on public understanding. ✔ Scientists need more than formulas and experiments. They need creativity, communication skills, critical thinking, and ethics. ✔ The sciences teach us to challenge conventional wisdom, to find solutions, to innovate, to discover, to collaborate. ✔ The liberal arts equip scientists to communicate their findings. ✔ A liberal arts education helps us understand the human condition, an asset in any field. ✔ Education and job training are not the same thing, and we should not conflate the two. ✔ Who knows what the jobs of tomorrow will look like? A broad- based education best prepares us for the future. ✔ We should not make the error of believing that all jobs are either STEM or non-STEM. ✔ People draw on different skills across the course of their careers. Education must foster flexibility. ✔ Employers value people with effective communication and problem-solving skills. ✔ Business leaders value thinking critically as well as thinking creatively. ✔ The liberal arts prepare students to handle subjectivity and ambiguity. ✔ Liberal arts students need basic skills in science and math to cope with today's technology. ✔ The tools of the arts, humanities, sciences, and technology taken together best equip us to solve new and complex problems. ✔ The arts and sciences both involve problem-solving; they simply try to solve different problems. ✔ Effective problem-solving requires us to process all relevant information regardless of its disciplinary content. ✔ The rapidly changing world and decisions facing that world require a grasp of both sciences and the arts. ✔ There is no need for focus upon just the arts or just the sciences; the best education offers both. In Celebration of 50 years of CCAS: 50 Reasons the Arts and Sciences Work Well Together College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities University of West Florida