| Computer technology has become a ubiquitous presence within our daily lives and a part of our educational curricula at all levels. This happened slowly at first and then, with the advent of the microcomputer and its ever-increasing processing power and its constantly decreasing cost, at a frightening pace. Widener University has, as have many other colleges and universities throughout America, assimilated computer technology into its liberal education curriculum, using it first as a research tool for faculty, then as an instrumental tool for administrative duties, and presently as both an intellectual pursuit in the form of a computer science major and as an instrumental tool within other major areas of study. As our nation attempts to struggle toward excellence in education, the justification for the existence of computer technology as both an intellectual as well as an instrumental pursuit within a liberal education surfaces again and again. Widener University has found a place for computer technology within its traditionally liberal education curriculum.;The Engineering faculty at Widener University began using a mainframe computer for research purposes in the 1960s. They soon integrated computer usage into the Engineering curriculum. And, by the end of the decade, physics, mathematics, business, and liberal arts students were permitted to take courses using the new technology. As the 1970s progressed, modular courses dealing with computers and computing were introduced into the college-wide curricular offerings.;Widener University began offering a major course of study in computer science in 1982. And, in 1983, the University opened several campus laboratories equipped with the new microcomputer. Students now had access to both the centralized mainframe and the decentralized processing power of the microcomputer and a wide variety of software.;Presently, Widener University students who graduate are computer literate as well as readied with a firm basis in the liberal arts.;The purpose of this research is to discover how, when, and why Widener University assimilated computer technology into its liberal education curriculum; what the argument for that assimilation was; and if the curriculum reflects computer technology as an intellectual or an instrumental pursuit, or both. |
