Academic Relevancy

So today was the second Annual Liberal Arts Symposium (LAS). I participated as a presenter and an observer. I presented my math senior research this morning. I took a previous social model (simulated on a computer) that was arguing for the importance of religion by showing that under certain conditions competitive players fared better than nice players. We took this model and tried to apply a social network to this model. We found that the social network is important in determining the effectiveness of various strategies.

As part of my obligation to the LAS I needed to stay to listen to the rest of the presentations in my group. I was in the natural science group. I was struck by the presentations by the lack of applicability to these problems to seemingly global problems, such as clean water, food, shelter, and other things that make for peace. I am not trying to bash Chemistry, because the students and professors can do things, and say words that I don’t even begin to comprehend. But my problem is that if a student can synthesize a new molecule, so what? Is the world better? Is the world better because of my research? Probably not. We have all of this intellectual brain power in college, what are we doing with it? I have done so many mindless projects that don’t get read by anyone other than the professor. Yes I have learned a great deal. I think the best thing that I have learned, is I have learned how to learn. I can research a topic in no time. But so what? How does me writing a paper about Islamic Scripture make the world a better place? How does me studying classical music make the world a better place? I know more. But would college be better if we would work on real world problems? Why don’t we in class we spend half of the class learning about historic roots of problems and the other half applying ideas to today to make the world better? I know that we must understand the world to make a difference. But can we ever achieve knowledge? I am a senior and for the first time I am applying what I am learning, by organizing the candle light vigil. I apply what I learn about peace to conflicts of today. But mostly, that is on my own time. I wonder what we could accomplish, academia that is, if we would work to apply more of our time to the problems of today. How can we achieve academic relevancy? Even if we could make chemistry problems, for example, less esoteric, personal endeavors, but made them relevant to today would be great. I hope we can figure out a way.