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Grant: I'm Grant Cornwell. I'm the President of the College and a Professor of Philosophy.
This is my fourth year at the College of Wooster.
I've known about Wooster pretty much my whole academic career. In fact, my very first academic
paper I gave at a conference at the College of Wooster when I was probably about twenty-eight,
it was a conference on interdisciplinarity. And I've paid attention to Wooster ever since
because it's known throughout the academy as being a very fine liberal arts college
known for its undergraduate research program.
So one of the most delightful and charming surprises about coming to the College of Wooster
was the quality of the student body. Both my wife Peg and I find Wooster students to
be earnest, sincere about their reasons for being here, completely unpretentious, however,
no sense of entitlement, and still have a healthy sense of irony and sense of humor
about themselves and the place. So, it's really the Wooster students are the reason I'm here.
That's why I get up every morning.
I think the most important insight that I've come to about Independent Study at the College
of Wooster is it's not a capstone experience; it's not something that students do only in
their fourth year. Because we've been doing it for sixty years, it's a pedagogical approach
to liberal education, which means that all four years are imbued with this goal of developing
student's capacity for independent inquiry.
The reason I direct an Independent Study each year is really two. The first is, frankly,
selfish. It's very rewarding. To be able to work with a student one-on-one on these fascinating
philosophical questions each year brings a dimension to my work that I very much enjoy.
But, the second reason is probably more profound. I really don't think that I can lead this
College without understanding what it is that makes Wooster ‘Wooster’, and it is the
Independent Study program. So I need an annual, intimate experience with that process for
me to be able to understand how to lead the College.