Lucete shines on revival of humanities and liberal arts

A program to support liberal arts students, Lucete Humanities Project (Lucete), is now in operation providing multiple career, educational, and personal developmental programs and is receiving positive feedback from many students and professors.
Lucete is a part of the Initiative for College of Humanities Research and Education (CORE), the first federal educational program promoting liberal arts. Lucete means “to shine brightly” in Latin, much like the ultimate aim of the Lucete to revive the field of humanities and liberal arts.
“Under the vision of ‘world’s best LUCETE college of humanities,’ Lucete seeks to create students with warmth, presence, and inquiry, a humanities student with creative intelligence apt for the 21st century,” said a Lucete official.
The four main programs are Ars (Asking, Research, Scholar), Pagus (Pioneering, Global, Specialist), Iris (Integrating, Relevance, Seeker), and Dynamis (Discipline, Networking, Membership, Sunbeam). While other programs are limited to certain departments such as Ars being limited to the departments of Korean and English Language & Literature, History, Philosophy, and Christian Studies, Iris covers all majors in the College of Liberal Arts.
Lucete have also financially supported individuals by providing scholarships since mid-September. From Sept. 26, it also started offering job interview coaching and one-on-one coaching sessions. The one-on-one coaching provides consulting on résumés, and inform students of their own strengths, abilities and internship programs they can apply for. Since Sept. 7, special lectures have been taking place every Wednesday evening for sophomores and juniors, centering around employment.
Initially, when the school was selected as a recipient of CORE in March, it was met much dissent from students. The students made complaints regarding what they saw as a systematic exclusion of student voices in the school’s preparation in order to secure such government programs. Despite students’ objections in the beginning, now many give positive feedback on the programs Lucete provides.
“I had originally viewed CORE negatively as I had thought it to be similar to PRIME which reduced the College of Liberal Arts student quota,” stated Park Ji-ho (alias), a Liberal Arts student participating in CORE. “But after listening to explanations from the participating professors and seeing various student support programs like scholarships and club subsidies, I am now more assured of the benefits of the CORE.”
In addition to students, professors have also shared positive impressions about CORE as the programs seek to deepen and strengthen liberal arts studies.
“Many opportunities are opening up for the students,” commented Professor Lee Ok-joo of Chinese Language & Literature on the Pagus program. “For Global Regional Studies, many language programs and chances to study abroad are opening up, along with various scholarships. I believe it will be helpful for students.”
Although it is still in the early stage, the response from both the students and professors has created a positive outlook for the new Lucete Humanities Project.