It’s no secret that liberal arts take a backseat to the hard sciences at Iowa State — that’s why we’re the “Iowa State University of Science and Technology.” A student only needs to walk past the futuristic Hoover and Howe Halls (massive buildings that house one engineering discipline) and compare them to the Soviet-style architecture of Ross Hall, which contains several liberal arts disciplines.

But ISU liberal arts majors don’t mind. They realize that Iowa State still offers a reasonably good liberal arts curriculum. However, the university may head down a dangerous path of neglecting the liberal arts altogether.

The first draft of the 2005 University Strategic Plan has some professors worried. They say the plan will transform the university into one that is strictly devoted to science, technology and business, thus leaving out classical studies. Robert Baum, associate professor of religious studies, said in Monday’s Daily that “it seems this is saying that for land-grant colleges, we should just be practical; we should just be involved in business and patents and things like that.”

Iowa State has good reason to want to pump up these programs. When an engineer graduates, he can either A) become a rich alumnus and spend the next decades filling the university’s coffers, or B) do graduate research at Iowa State, then patent a new piece of technology that also fills the university’s coffers.

When a liberal arts major graduates, his or her long-term earning potential offers bleaker prospects for the alumni association.

Iowa State needs to keep its focus on liberal arts. True, most engineers roll their eyes at the 15-credit diversity requirement, but taking a philosophy class on ethical issues can stimulate the left side of the brain when students usually only use their right side.

At the risk of sounding self-serving (since all but one member of the Iowa State Daily’s editorial board is a liberal arts major), the liberal arts disciplines at Iowa State are nothing to sneeze at. For example, the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication was named one of 37 leading journalism schools by Editor and Publisher magazine, one of journalism’s leading industry publications.

In addition, liberal arts programs augment the hard sciences. Mark Rectanus, professor of German who was recently named a master teacher, has forged cooperative agreements with both the College of Engineering and the College of Agriculture to offer a secondary major in foreign languages for those students.

The Strategic Planning Committee needs to remember liberal arts when it creates a second draft of the University Strategic Plan.

Iowa State won’t be “becoming the best” without us.