Abstract for: System Dynamics in the Traditional Humanities Survey: Engendering Perceptions of Relevance in a Field Under Threat Through Use

Most American colleges and universities have humanities programs and humanities general education requirements of some kind or another, and most of these programs have gradually dwindling enrollments. In public discourse, the term “crisis” often gets used to describe the overall situation (see, for example, Hutner and Mohamed, 2013 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences special report on the subject, The Heart of the Matter). This essay describes a curriculum I have designed for the Maine Maritime Academy that uses basic system dynamic modeling (primarily stock and flow diagrams) to increase perceptions of relevance for this core curriculum and offers a proposal for much larger scale implementation of the concept.