R2D2 and the Liberal Arts (Top Comments)

By Rose Cahalan in Letters on October 28, 2011 at 3:46 pm | No Comments

This week, we tweeted an archival photo of the Texas Capitol under construction in the 1880s. We loved Bri Fairley‘s comment on Twitter: It totally looks like R2D2. Judge for yourself here.

@UTLibraries were seeing spots with another old photo from our Tumblr: @TheAlcalde presents awesome photos from their archive. Love this dalmatian & matching owner (or the other way around?)

Marcela Conatser liked our story about three siblings whose mom still graduated in four years despite having three babies along the way: Makes me feel selfish for the “worries” I had at UT. Neat to think about the stories & history contained there.

Kelly Kubasta approved of our (members-only) portrait of UT’s tech commercialization chief, Richard Miller. His strategy is right on point—build a strong foundation from the intellectual property and then enable and motivate a strong team to create a sustainable (and funded) business model based upon that IP.

We read with interest the dialogue sparked by our story on UT’s elimination of degree programs in Greek and Slavic. Some readers, like Christopher Murphy, said to hell with the humanities: Maybe the University should target MORE liberal arts (aka degrees which don’t necessarily lead to good paying jobs) programs.

Others, such as Kathy Durst, stood up for the value of a liberal arts degree: James Michener is rolling in his grave!

Christine Eliseev said her Slavic degree worked out: I graduated with a liberal arts degree in ’92 (Slavic Studies). Today I’m a practice director in a big 4 consulting firm and my success can directly be attributed to the lessons taught in liberal arts – most especially: 1) how to think about all perspectives, rather than simply follow instructions and 2) a lot about diplomacy and good communication skills.

Creative commons photo by Flickr user tibchris

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