Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech

Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech A tradition 130 years in the making

The liberal arts have always been a part of the Georgia Institute of Technology. English was one of the six original courses offered when the Institute opened its doors in 1888.

But such coursework wasn’t always as highly valued at Georgia Tech as it is today. At its founding, the school relied heavily on the “shop culture” model, says Georgia Tech graduate student Paul DeMerritt, who has extensively researched the history of liberal arts at the Institute.

“Students educated in the shop culture tradition were trained to be machinists, foremen, and other manufacturing professionals whose future would lie outside of research and academia,” DeMerritt says.

By the turn of the century, however, the shop tradition had given way. A fire that heavily damaged the main shop building, along with changing educational attitudes, led to an expanding mix of liberal arts classes

The Class of 1906

In 1906, in a sign of the growing importance of liberal arts at Georgia Tech, an English professor named Kenneth G. Matheson was chosen as the Institute’s third president, and many students were already required to take foreign language courses. By 1908, in a development that would foreshadow today’s interdisciplinary style, the English Department was teaching not only English, but also economics, history, and geography.

Kenneth G. Matheson, Georgia Tech's third president and champion of liberal arts education

“English and the modern languages are … necessary to produce men able to communicate with doctors, lawyers, statesmen, and financiers on an equal footing. Without (them) … the technical man never reaches full potential." — Kenneth G. Matteson, 1910

The 1930s and 1940s saw more changes, with the creation of Departments of Economics and Social Sciences and the creation of a General College, which included the liberal arts departments.

But it was the 1960s when big changes began to occur.

In 1967, after many years of discussion about the need for more humanities and social science courses at Georgia Tech, a series of campus lectures called for major changes to the curriculum and more attention to liberal arts. “These lectures helped catalyze student interest in liberal arts, and were reported as being exceptionally well attended,” DeMerritt said. Here, Princeton University philsophy professor Carl G. Hempel, adresses students during the first lecture, in October 1967.

The Georgia Tech Alumnus magazine later devoted 28 pages to the lectures and the idea of liberal arts at Georgia Tech, calling the recent developments “as exciting as anything has happened around Tech in a long time.”

The November/December 1967 issue of the alumni magazine.

In 1968, at the urging of students and faculty calling for more attention to the humanities and social sciences, the Institute approved a core curriculum that included humanities and social science courses, and created the History of Technology program. These students are attending one the first African American studies courses, in 1969.

In 1988, John Patrick Crecine, Georgia Tech’s ninth president, proposed a major restructuring of the Institute that would emphasize the humanities and social sciences.

John Crecine, Georgia Tech's ninth president.

"Georgia Tech can become a new form of technological university by adding breadth, by broadening our intellectual base, by adding intellectual strength and degree programs in non-technical areas in the behavioral, social and policy sciences, and in the humanities." — John P. Crecine, inaugural address, 1988

Two years later, in 1990, Georgia Tech established the Ivan Allen college of Management, Policy, and International Affairs. It also began offering the first social science degree, a master's of science in technology and science policy. “In the late 1980s,” DeMerritt says, “the looming anticipation of the new millennium served as a potent metaphor for the unprecedented acceleration of technology, globalization, and the expansion of the private sector that was catapulting society into a new era."

It would take some time to fully realize Crecine’s vision, but in 1998, the role of the Ivan Allen College was redefined to focus on liberal arts.

A year later, Sue Rosser was named the college’s dean. During her tenure, the college saw the addition of three doctoral programs, three master’s degrees, four bachelor’s degrees, and increased the number of tenure-track faculty by a third.

The college also doubled student enrollment, and sponsored research increased from $1 million in 2002 to $6 million in 2008.

Today, with six schools and sixteen research centers and one of the nation's largest concentrations of researchers of science, medicine, technology, and engineering, the Ivan Allen College stands for innovation in liberal arts education.

Dean Jacqueline Royster

Ivan Allen scholars and students, working in more than 30 areas of inquiry, seek to expand the research horizons of the liberal arts through interdisciplinary collaborations with diverse teams of humanists, social scientists, and engineers from academia, business, and government.

The Ivan Allen College also carries on the legacy of its namesake, former Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, who helped transform Atlanta from a stagnant, segregated town of the Old South into a burgeoning international city at the forefront of human rights. The College proudly advances Mayor Allen's legacies of transformative urban leadership and socially and ethically conscious action. Our cross-disciplinary research, teaching, and service enlarge upon the very same realms that were part of his original "Forward Atlanta" plan and, today, encompass innovative education, global leadership development, international relations, governance and public policy, community relations, economic development and innovation, urban development and sustainability, arts and entertainment, and sports.

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