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Humanities Labs Gina Hiatt has an encouraging piece in "Inside Higher Education" suggesting the need for "humanities labs" -- spaces like science labs where graduate students and mentoring faculty connect with each other on a daily basis. Humanities graduate students seldom see their advisors -- perhaps weekly but more likely less often -- and they work pretty much in isolation. They have no more frequent links to fellow graduate students. Hiatt's concerns are justified but they also apply to undergraduates. We have no places just to "hang out" where unformed ideas can be tested and shaped. Our students never work in teams -- I once suggested this to a good student and she looked at me as if I was barmy -- and only rarely connect with faculty. At my college there is a suite of physics labs at the center of which is a student lounge; I have never seen it empty. It is a bit grungy, cluttered and an ideal place for students to collect. There are blackboards, coffee pots (I'm reminded of the coffee pot in the Trojan Room at Cambridge which was one of the first live pictures on the web -- c. 1994), old couches and other physics detritis. There is nothing even close to such a space for humanities majors and more's the loss for its absence.
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Last modified: Friday, October 31, 2008 at 9:20 PM.
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