Higher Ed Utah

(Brian Maffly, Salt Lake Tribune) — Leave it to an engineering student with little prior formal schooling to a win an essay contest about why the humanities matter.

The sciences are great for discovery, but they are also “equally capable of wreaking havoc,” wrote University of Utah freshman Jacob Andra in his entry in the College of Humanities’ recent challenge to describe the relevance of the humanities in 750 words.

The humanities provide a counterbalance for understanding what gives science its directions and the zeitgeist, or spirit, of our times, according to the essay that humanities Dean Robert Newman declared the best of 50 entries, earning Andra a $1,000 scholarship.

“Whether we are neuroscientists or English lit majors, we can be enabled to search inside ourselves and examine why we think and act the way we do,” Andra wrote. “Hopefully, as more and more people engage in this sort of inquiry, a critical mass of society will become increasingly conscientious and less shortsighted. That’s the sort of world I want to live in.”

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