Sean Russell '01 looks forward to bringing the lessons of Portraits to his own classroom. "As I prepare to begin my career as a high school English teacher, I am constantly reminded of the value of the Humanities Program. My goal is to pass these values on to my students." James Callanan '92 summarizes for many the lasting effects of the program. "Teachers come in all forms, from Socrates to Nietzsche, and there are always lessons waiting to be learned, but not always students who know how to learn from them. Thanks to Portraits of Human Greatness, I learned how to learn those lessons and to continue learning those lessons."

The Next Twenty-Five Years
While Portraits has remained vital for a quarter century, its future is something that current director, Professor Kevin Staley of the Philosophy Department, does not take for granted. When he met with the college's Board of Trustees last December he identified several issues confronting the program, which, thanks to a grant from the Davis Foundation, will undergo its most comprehensive assessment to date.

While the essentials of Western thought and history have not changed, the way students learn has. Consider that 25 years ago students were using a typewriter much like Father Placidus's. Today, with much smaller machines, they can not only write their papers and take notes, but take a virtual tour of an archeological ruin in Greece or the Sistine Chapel or the Globe Theater; they can access a scholarly edition of the Iliad or enter a conversation about existentialism with other readers of Camus from around the world. How ought a seminar discussion incorporate such technologies? What is the fate of the conventional lecture in such a world?

Then there is the Dana Center, which is also a quarter century old. Never mind that it was built before today's technologies were thought of, more basic items like the air conditioner and the roof are in need of repair or replacement. The building requires hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs, and it would take several million more to bring it up to current codes. Recently a college committee reviewed an architect's plan for a comprehensive renovation and expansion of the facility that would result in state-of-the-art space and technology for the humanities and performing arts. Unless a significant funding source is identified, however, such a facility will have to wait.

As for the humanities faculty, only 17 percent who originally taught in the program are still doing so. One challenge Professor Staley describes is continuing to insure that new faculty "feel a sense of real ownership" for a program that they did not invent, keeping in mind that their primary responsibility is to their own discipline.

Recent new units on Marie Curie, Sigmund Freud, and Duke Ellington reflect the faculty's willingness and determination to stretch the program within its pedagogical confines. Whether a complete overhaul of the program is called for or whether it would yield something better or worse has been a perennial topic of discussion for at least the past two decades.

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