Local Liberal Arts Professor Selected to Speak at National Conference 

ATLANTA (May 2, 2008) – Oglethorpe University Assistant Professor of Biology Karen Schmeichel has been invited to participate in the Twenty-first Century Liberal Education: A Contested Concept. This is a faculty seminar hosted at Transylvania University July 24 through 27.

   The Twenty-first Century Liberal Education: A Contested Concept is sponsored by Transylvania University’s Bingham Program for Excellence in Teaching. The seminar’s goal is to clarify the meaning of liberal education for its practitioners and to foster a deeper commitment to its preservation at institutions of higher learning in America. Furthermore, it seeks to contribute to a national conversation on the idea of liberal education and the mission of the liberal arts college in twenty-first century America. The seminar will provide an historical overview of the best thinking about the purpose of liberal education through the ages.

   “The fifteen participants in the seminar are chosen from applicants from the nation’s liberal arts colleges, so the selection of Dr. Schmeichel is a tribute to her and to Oglethorpe’s core program. Her application included an exceptionally fine essay in which she described her own growing appreciation of liberal arts education,” writes William Shropshire, interim provost of Oglethorpe University. Dr. Schmeichel is not the first Oglethorpe University professor to be invited to speak at this prestigious seminar. Politics Professor and incoming provost Stephen Herschler was invited to participate in the seminar two years ago.

   Dr. Karen Schmeichel joined the Oglethorpe University faculty in 2006. She studied cellular biology at Middlebury College in Vermont and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Utah. She teaches genetics, cellular biology, developmental biology and general biology.