Liberal Arts
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"This college being what it is, I try to integrate music into the fabric of my classes, even the classes in literature. When Sal and Dean drive cross-country in a '54 Hudson, what's on the radio? It's mostly bebop, but they might have had an ear for rock and r&b as well: Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino."
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Emma Romeu, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Liberal Arts Department"Students need Spanish in many senses. They need it to communicate with the public sometimes, because they have many kinds of audiences. They need Spanish to speak with producers who can hire them in other countries, to speak with other musicians. If they have a group and they have a pianist who speaks Spanish, they can make the situation more comfortable for everybody. They need Spanish to sing, too. They ask me a lot of musical terms. All the time I have in mind that they are artists. I don't forget it."
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- M.F.A., University of Pittsburgh
- Published in local and national newspapers and magazines
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"In addition to wanting my students to consider things from more than one perspective, I'd like them to take away a real sense of how connected they are. They talk a lot about how hard that can be: how fast-paced things are and how even with technology you can stay connected but you're not in the same room. I think a lot of things they experience at Berklee do let them feel a sense of community—and not just the college community, but also Boston and the much larger global community they're interacting with on a regular basis."
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"I developed the course The History of America's Image in the World because so many of our students travel abroad to play, and work extensively with musicians from other countries. They take pride in American musical traditions, but sometimes have a complicated relationship with American political and social history, and they need to be better-prepared to work in a world in which people have strong negative and strong positive ideas about the nation's history and role. In other words, they need to stop playing gigs abroad and telling people they're from Canada."
Read MoreBeth Platow, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Liberal Arts Department"I was on the staff here for 11 years in the Counseling and Advising Center, and I was running a first-year advising program until I left that position to teach. I particularly love working with entering students. They're starting out on this journey that for so many has been a dream since they were children. I'm really fueled by their excitement and their energy. Thinking back to when I was a freshman, I'm really fortunate that I connected with an upper semester student, my roommate, and several faculty members the first few weeks. Coming into an urban setting where there are a lot of like-minded people, but also a lot of competition, and looking for connections, I think it's really a challenge, so I'm trying more than anything to provide connections in our class. I want them to connect to their creativity and their passion, and I want them to connect with each other, and certainly with me. You can come to me and it doesn't have to be about the first draft of your essay!"
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Julie Rold, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Liberal Arts Department"I think writing and music actually have a lot in common: both are auditory arts. I try to get students to see that great prose and poetry is fundamentally about creating great sound. It's through language, but it's still sound. I want my students to be attuned to the musicality of the language, even when they're writing something seemingly straightforward."
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George Eastman, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Liberal Arts Department"It's true that you can generalize from African drumming to Indian drumming or to Irish bodhran drumming. But liberal arts courses teach generalizable skills that can be applied in every area of the student's life. There are skills of reasoning, problem-solving, learning how to write and express oneself, and generally how to understand the human drama a little more deeply."
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"Liberal arts means that there's a lot of freedom to study a lot of different things that are relevant and that matter and that are a part of a whole. And the whole is your life. So liberal arts gives you the opportunity to study things that are of interest and that can inform your life and that can sometimes spark something in you that you had no idea was there. Liberal arts is there to help people think more effectively, to problem solve more effectively. It's there to help people appreciate relationships, to appreciate the different things that are involved just in being alive. If you're interested in getting a lot more tools to use for the rest of your life, that's what liberal arts is for."
Read MoreSara Whitman, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Liberal Arts Department"It is really important to study liberal arts. Without understanding how to do more than just music you can't live up to your creative potential or have as much depth in your artistry. You won't be able to use your music as effectively to reach out to a broader community. I want students to leave my classes with not only excitement about being at Berklee, but an understanding of their own creative skills outside of music, and how they can use those skills to support and enhance their musical talent."
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