MCEVER SEMINARS

Overview

The McEver Program for Engineering and the Liberal Arts represents an important new direction for humanities and technical education at Georgia Tech and beyond. Built on a foundation of multidisciplinary seminars, the program allows participants to explore the intersection of technology and society through directed discussion, travel, and informal learning activities. By creating not just a classroom but a community of students and faculty from engineering and the liberal arts, the program reflects Georgia Tech's commitment to multi-disciplinary education, undergraduate research, and lifelong learning.

McEver Seminars

The McEver Seminar represents the clearest, most focused expression of Georgia Tech's dialogue between technology and the humanities to date, and it aspires to extend that conversation into learning opportunities and contexts beyond the walls of Georgia Tech. The seminars are comprised of approximately 20 students, half from IAC and half from the College of Engineering, and two professors, one from each college. Designed around a particular theme or issue—such as "Situating Science" or "Progress in the 21st Century"— the seminars serve several learning objectives:

  • To expose students to the energetic interplay of ideas—technical and humanistic—that is at the heart of academic culture
  • To develop students' confidence in their own intellectual abilities
  • To engage students in a seminar with close interaction with faculty
  • To inspire lifetime learning by requiring intellectual engagement in events and interaction beyond the classroom

Students who register for the seminar may receive three hours of humanities or social credit. "The most exciting prospect of the McEver Seminars is to provide a mechanism for students and faculty to probe unexplored, multidisciplinary territory, informed by both the existing body of knowledge and by forays into the real worlds beyond the classroom and campus. They will discover questions, if not always answers, that will stay with them for a lifetime." -- Dr. Richard Barke, McEver Fellow, School of Public Policy

Faculty Dinners

To build support for interdisciplinary work on campus, the McEver Program supports two faculty seminars each semester. The goal of the seminars will be to build a faculty community in support of the program and to identify faculty who might collaborate on future seminars. The seminar will encourage interdisciplinary team-building that will further reinforce the strong humanities presence in technical fields at Georgia Tech. H.

Bruce McEver

H. Bruce McEver, the Program’s chief benefactor, graduated from Georgia Tech with a BS in Industrial Engineering in 1968. He earned is MBA from Harvard and is the founder and president of the Berkshire Capital Corporation. In 1999, McEver honored his alma mater and paid tribute to the enduring presence of poetry in his life by founding the H. Bruce McEver Visiting Chair of Writing, which allows Georgia Tech to host a poet of national prominence each spring. When he established the Program for Engineering and the Liberal Arts in 2001 McEver further established his view that being an engineer need not isolate one from ideas and culture.